Development Cooperation Handbook/Designing and Executing Projects/Stakeholders Identification and analysis

Stakeholders are those involved in and/or affected (negatively or positively) by the outcome and the impact of an action, project, programme.

See definition of stakeholder in the manual.

By engaging the stakeholders early on, everyone will have a better understanding of the intervention and the challenges it faces in implementation.

According to the World Bank good way to identify appropriate stakeholders is to start by asking questions.


 * Who are the representatives of those likely to be affected?
 * Who is responsible for contributing to the achievement of the project objectives?
 * Who is likely to mobilize support for the project activities?
 * Who can contribute financial and technical resources to the project?

Remember that the project does not achieve its objective directly! The activities that the action team will carry out will produce the outputs that will empower beneficiaries to better interact with their communities and utilise project deliverables to achieve the project outcomes. These outcomes will enable the stakeholders to tackle the problems identified and produce changes in the factors generating these problems, thereby contributing to the achievement of the project objectives.



1. We need to prepare our outputs (manuals and documentaries) for specific target categories and so we need to understand their requirements (i.e. the information they need and the kind of communication climate they would like to have)

You may classify stakeholders according to the level of understanding : - Experts - Specialists - Technicians - Theoreticians: - Familiar: - Novice - Decision Makers

Once you know who your target is, you can put to yourself the following questions.


 * 1) What are your goals and objectives for each individual stakeholder?
 * 2) How do you want each of them to see you?
 * 3) What messages do you want to send?
 * 4) How is each message different or the same for each stakeholder?
 * 5) What do you want back from them?

Then in the interviews verify if the answers you had given to yourself are different from the answers you are receiving from the stakeholders that you are interviewing.

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