Ambrose Kwabena Amenshiah

Donor partners have been supporting developing economies in capacity development through donor‐funded projects to enable them to achieve sustainable development. To understand the effectiveness of such projects, this paper adopted a mixed‐methods approach to study a capacity development project funded by the World Bank and implemented in 46 metropolitan and municipal assemblies in Ghana. The study employed the European Centre for Development Policy Management's core capabilities model (5Cs) to examine the World Bank project. The study recommends that, to ensure sustainability, capacity development projects should be embedded in Ghana's development programmes. We also propose an alternative model for the implementation of capacity development projects to achieve sustainable development.