Nana Asantewa Afadzinu, Executive Director, West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI), on Friday urged civil society groups to adopt indigenous methodologies at capacity develop programmes to make it more acceptable to those involved.

She expressed concern about the huge adoption of foreign methodologies which sometimes made it difficult for indigenous people to grasp and implement.

Mrs Afadzinu stated during the closing ceremony of a two-day capacity building seminar organized by the Institute for 20 capacity development experts from West, East and Central Africa in Accra. She called for the adoption of new and familiar methodologies in which could make learning easier.

The workshop was to brainstorm on the best means of promoting capacity development for civil society organisations in West Africa.

Mrs Afadzinu said the consultative meeting was organized to enable WACSI, a leading capacity building Institute in West Africa, to fill capacity gaps within civil society, to gather valuable perspectives on the way forward for its capacity development programmes.

The Institute used the platform to gain insights on how to tailor its programmes to effectively address identified capacity gaps of CSOs in West Africa.

The WACSI executive director said the meeting also created a platform for WACSI and African capacity development experts with unique specialties to reflect on the effectiveness of capacity development initiatives, quality of programmes and quality of delivery for training programmes aimed at enhancing the capacities of CSOs and practitioners.

The experts meeting will enable WACSI to identify best practices and novel and indigenous ways of designing and delivering capacity development initiatives to meet the institutional needs of CSOs in West Africa.

“The meeting served as a valuable platform to draw vital lessons that would inform the process of identifying, designing and delivering capacity development initiatives for CSOs in West Africa”, she said.

In an open forum, the experts urged WACSI to engage in research to develop a baseline for the state of civil society that would support the assessment of the achievements and challenges facing CSOs.

WACSI was also urged to create a working group from the pool of experts who would substantively contribute to research, and the design and delivery of capacity development initiatives to be implemented by the Institute.