More than a decade after the 1994 genocide, Rwandan government ministries struggled to implement long-term plans or even meet mid-term targets. A skills shortage hindered projects at the district and local levels. In 2008, Charles Karake and Stella Mugabo, senior officials at the Human Resources and Institutional Development Agency, a government organization charged with improving national capacity, experimented with a management practice known as the Rapid Results Approach to enhance ministries’ ability to implement successful projects. Rapid Results encouraged officials to focus on small-scale projects that could be completed in a relatively brief time span, usually less than four months. This case shows how Rwanda’s Ministry of Local Government, under the direction of Protais Musoni, championed the technique to advance the goals of an anti-poverty program. A pilot program in Gashaki, an impoverished region in north Rwanda, improved the ability of local officials and leaders to help poor families raise their incomes. Although adoption of Rapid Results did not progress beyond the initial phase for a variety of reasons, public servants who participated in the program increased their ability to deliver services effectively and many of Gashaki’s residents improved their financial positions and quality of life within a surprisingly short period. However, critics noted the high cost of implementing Rapid Results and stressed that other factors also contributed to the positive results in Gashaki. This study considers the approach as an alternative to traditional methods of building capacity.

When Ernest Bai Koroma assumed the presidency of Sierra Leone in 2007, he promised to run his government as efficiently as a private business. A few years earlier, a brutal 11-year civil war had ended, leaving an estimated 50,000 dead and an additional two million displaced. The effects of the war gutted the government’s capacity to deliver basic services. Koroma launched an ambitious agenda that targeted key areas for improvement including energy, agriculture, infrastructure and health. In 2009, he scored a win with the completion of the Bumbuna hydroelectric dam that brought power to the capital, Freetown. At the same time, the president faced mounting pressure to reduce maternal and child death rates, which were the highest in the world. In November, he announced an initiative to provide free health care for pregnant women, lactating mothers and children under five years of age, and set the launch date for April 2010, only six months away. Working with the country’s chief medical officer, Dr. Kisito Daoh, he shuffled key staff at the health ministry, created committees that brought ministries, donors and non-governmental organizations together to move actions forward, and developed systems for monitoring progress. Strong support from the center of government proved critical to enabling the project to launch on schedule. Initial data showed an increase in utilization rates at health centers and a decline in child death rates. 

Violence in neighborhoods on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa, escalated in the late 1990s. In areas like Manenberg and Hanover Park, gangs dominated community life, interrupted the delivery of public services, and in some instances threatened civil servants working in housing offices, medical clinics, and libraries. Following the African National Congress’s victory in the first democratic local government elections in 1996, city officials sought new ways to reduce the impact of the gang presence on the delivery of community services. Ahmedi Vawda, executive director of the Directorate of Community Development (called ComDev), and his team thought that the only ways to succeed were to build confidence among residents—thereby increasing their resolve in standing up to the gangs—and to lower the attraction this way of life had for young people. By giving a greater voice to residents, including greater discretion over service delivery, the team hoped to build social capital and gradually enlarge the space under public control. The ComDev team mapped the economic and social challenges facing the most-vulnerable communities and created Area Coordinating Teams (ACTs) that enabled local organizations to play major roles in governance. These forums increased community understanding of local government responsibilities—along with the community’s role in development—by identifying areas where municipal funding could support community initiatives. Although the ACTs did not take direct action against the gangs, in the neighborhood of Manenberg they provided a space for local participation in development projects and laid the foundation for progress by soliciting local feedback for city services, by asserting the presence of government in previously insecure areas, and by restoring a degree of community confidence.