Document: Results and Lessons Learned from PACA in South Africa

The GTZ BDS/LED Programme aims at providing support to South African local communities by testing, adapting and marketing appropriate LED concepts and tools and transferring them to South African LED support institutions and facilitators. One of these tools, named "Participatory Appraisal of Competitive Advantages" or PACA, has been introduced to South Africa roughly two years ago. It has been tested and assessed in several settings since then. The following article summarizes and evaluates the main results that PACA was able to produce in two of these learning cases, namely Ilembe District Municipality (IDM) in KwaZulu Natal and Mbombela Local Municipality (MLM) in Mpumalanga. The evaluation is based on field visits that were undertaken by an evaluation team from the GTZ BDS/LED Programme roughly a year after the first PACAs in Ilembe, and 18 months after the Hazyview PACA. The team used semi-structured interviews to capture the views of local stakeholders with regard to the PACA process and results and interviewed a total number of 18 stakeholders. The assessment of the two PACA learning cases is based on the GTZ Programme's Impact Model for PACA, which will be briefly explained in the next chapter. The subsequent chapter will give an overview of the main findings and proposals that were identified during the PACA exercises, before the results of the two PACA learning cases will be analysed and interpreted. The last chapter summarizes the most important lessons learned that were identified in Ilembe and Mbombela in order to facilitate the further adaptation of the PACA methodology to the South African context.