experiment) was first broached to the government. Section II presents an analytic narrative of the sequence and logic of events and milestones that demonstrate the growing capacity of the public sector in Burundi to deliver basic services.<sup>6</sup> Section III extracts from the Burundi experience the elements of an approach to capacity building in developing countries – Leadership for Results (L4R) – that can be adapted flexibly to different contexts. Section IV concludes with implications for the development of a “science of delivery” for development programs.

# **<u>I. From Civil War to Post-Conflict State</u>**

Emerging from a ten-year civil war that began in 1993, Burundi began a long peace process, which resulted in what has been characterized as an exemplary transition from conflict to post-conflict. In August 2000, a peace and reconciliation accord was signed, and a transition government and parliament were established in 2002. A new constitution was approved in a national referendum in February 2005, communal elections were successfully conducted in June 2005, and parliamentary elections were held in July 2005. Mr. Pierre Nkurunziza, leader of the former rebel movement, was elected the new president by the Parliament and sworn into office in August 2005.

However, despite these promising circumstances, the new president inherited a country with huge institutional, financial, political, security and service delivery challenges left over from the civil war. For example, in the education sector, a serious loss of infrastructure (school buildings) as well as the collapse of provision networks for educational materials and equipment, such as the delivery of textbooks, was greatly hampering formal child education. Desertion of students from their schools due to insecurity (in 1992, 650,000 children were in school, yet by 1994 this had dropped to 440,000<sup>7</sup> ), as well as death and departure of teachers compounded lack of infrastructure and materials, leading to insufficient service delivery in education. In the academic year 2005-2006, the student to classroom ratio was 87:1, and the ratio of math textbooks to student was 20:1<sup>8</sup> .

Given the high rate of turnover at the vice-presidential and ministerial level, coupled with the fact that many Cabinet members and senior decision-makers in the newly constituted government were relatively inexperienced in professional government roles, the capacity of the public sector to act and absorb the large in-flows of money to the newly post-conflict environment and generate results from this was a matter of concern for the government, the donor community, and the citizenry. Emphasis was therefore placed on the need for an intensive and sustained process of capacity building to enable the public sector to perform its functions. Delivering on the pledges of the president in the new five-year plan was of utmost importance to security and development in this post-conflict, delicate power structure. The elected government needed to demonstrate success in priority areas, deliver needed services to citizens and gain political capital and trust from all to support the process of establishing stability and security in the country.

> 6 See Bates et al (1998) for the basic idea of an analytic narrative. 7 World Bank Institute (2007a)

> 8 World Bank Institute (2007b)

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