Re-imagining Capacity and Collective Change: Experiences from Senegal and Ghana

摘要

This article presents two studies which examine learning among community collectives in Ghana and Senegal, in their struggles to sustain their livelihoods and agency amid political, environmental, and socioeconomic pressures. In doing so, we considerhowthese experiences are reflected in the ways that human capacity is conceptualised and supported uuithin international cooperation and development. We argue that dominant practices described as 'capacity development' overlook the complex and locally-contingent character of development in favour of replicable and scaleable models; take an apolitical vieuu of capacity as the acquisition of discrete skills; and privilege the development of individual capacity and self-improvement over collective change.This limits the extent to uuhich learning and capacity development can genuinely empouuer peoples to imagine and uuork toward social change. In contrast, uue argue for a vieuu of capacity which is embedded in learning through collective struggle; an analysis of and engagement with pouuer relations; and attention to both short- and longer-term change.