Developing a sustainable regional capacity for skills training, methodological development and evidence-based research in the areas of vulnerability assessment and analysis (VAA) and social protection programming (SPP) is one of the objectives of the Regional Hunger and Vulnerability Programme (RHVP). The creation of such a “Centre of Excellence” (CoE) is also a priority within the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) Five-year Regional Plan for the Strengthening of VAA. In agreement with the SADC-Food Agriculture and Natural Resources (FANR) Directorate, RHVP recently completed an Institutional Assessment and Scoping Study to assess existing regional capacities and to define strategic options for developing such a centre.

The aim of this initiative is to create a permanent regional capacity to serve the needs of national governments and to reduce dependency on external resources and interventions, which are often driven by donor priorities and objectives. The creation of this entity is seen as an important step towards establishing regional and national accountability for addressing vulnerability to hunger, and towards building ownership of the necessary instruments and programmes.

The establishment of the “Centre of Excellence” will be a gradual process in terms of both the development and the scope of the Centre. Initial efforts will focus on the creation of capacity within an existing “hub” institution to provide a skills development programme for VAA practitioners. Depending on demand and available resources, this initial concept could conceivably be expanded to provide a range of training, research and development functions for VAA and SPP through a selective network of specialist centres throughout the region.

RHVP’s engagement in this regional initiative is to support the identification and selection of the “hub” centre and to work with it to develop a strategic plan together with the necessary toolkits, materials and curricula. RHVP does not have the financial resource to fund the Centre of Excellence, which is expected to become self-supporting after the initial establishment costs.

This document first identifies a set of criteria for the identification of appropriate institutions. These criteria were applied through a questionnaire, which was implemented by the RHVP Country Coordinators in the six countries of the Programme (Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe) and South Africa. The information from the questionnaire was used to shortlist a number of institutions for the Centre of Excellence. The scoping exercise also defined a competitive process for final selection and outlined key elements that would need to be addressed in the development of a strategic plan with the chosen centre.