Why should anyone and especially donors invest in networking of civil society actors? What is its specific contribution to learning and innovation for sustainable development? The answer to this question seems quite obvious: to a large degree, learning and innovation in development and development policy emerges as a result of multi-actor networking, both spontaneous and organised. The evidence to support this claim is rather overwhelming (i.e. Korten, 1993; Engel 1997). However, as many authors indicate, not all networking contributes to learning and innovation, and not all donor interventions help: only particular types of networks that are supported and managed in a particular way do. Therefore, the question donors should ask themselves is not so much why to support networking, but which networks to support and how?

http://www.mande.co.uk/docs/networkingforlearning.pdf