Objectives, process and core learning partnership

An interim evaluation of the Community-based Rural Development Project ¹ (PNGT2) was conducted by IFAD’s Office of Evaluation (OE) at the end of the first phase (February 2002–June 2007). The evaluation focused on three aspects: (i) project performance (relevance, effectiveness and efficiency); (ii) impact on rural poverty, sustainability and innovation; and (iii) performance by IFAD and its partners. Following a preparatory mission in March 2007 and a self-evaluation by the project, the main evaluation mission took place from 10 June to 4 July 2007. The evaluators drew on three sources of information: interviews with PNGT2 stakeholders and partners, a review of documents, and field observations in six provinces. A wrap-up meeting held at project headquarters with the governmental and financial partners discussed the evaluation mission’s aide-mémoire. The evaluation report was shared with the Core Learning Partnership (CLP) for comments and was finalized taking account of those comments.

The CLP comprised representatives of all parties directly involved in project preparation and implementation, that is: (i) Government of Burkina Faso (Ministry of Finance and Budget and Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Fisheries); (ii) project coordination unit; (iii) donors (IFAD’s Division for Western and Central Africa; World Bank country office; the Embassy of Denmark; United Nations Development Programme; (iv) IFAD’s Technical Advisory Division; and (v) OE. Most of the lessons learned and the evaluation’s recommendations are addressed to the foregoing. A final stakeholder workshop, bringing together the CLP and most other project stakeholders, took place at Ouagadougou on 22 November 2007. The present Agreement at Completion Point sets forth the major findings and recommendations of the evaluation that IFAD and the Government of Burkina Faso agree to adopt and implement

Major evaluation findings

Institutional framework and project financing. The PNGT2 is a follow-up to the Programme National de Gestion de Terroirs financed by the World Bank. The first phase of PNGT2 was formulated by the Government of Burkina Faso in 1998. The project was identified by the International Development Association (IDA) in October 1998 and appraised during 2000.

The project was approved by the Executive Boards of IFAD and IDA in May and September 2000 respectively, and the first phase was officially launched in February 2002. The project was executed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Fisheries. The total cost of the first phase of PNGT2 was estimated at US$114.85 million. The main source of financing was the first segment of US$66.7 million of an Adaptable Programme Loan from IDA. The project was cofinanced pari passu by an IFAD loan (No. 535-BF) of US$11.44 million. IDA was the cooperating institution for IFAD, administering the loan and supervising the project on the Fund’s behalf. Expected project financing included a counterpart contribution of US$14.30 million from the Government, beneficiary contributions of US$9.15, and a grant from the Government of Denmark (US$4.2 million) in support of the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system.

Major achievements. As a whole, the important quantitative results achieved in terms of physical and human resources may be attributed to the overall management of PNGT2, and attest to the effectiveness of project coordination and the national service providers involved. The local capacity-building component, inter alia, established 2 981 village land management commissions (CVGTs), conducted village-based planning, held awareness-raising and training sessions for the population in farming techniques, literacy and health care, and organized the operation and management (O&M) of project investments. The local investment fund component developed a cofinancing approach for community investments that fully involved beneficiaries in local subproject management.

Through financing facilities at the village and province levels, 9 622 contracts were signed and close to 18 250 subprojects implemented for an average of CFAF 10 million invested per village. The province-level facility failed owing to cumbersome contracting procedures and a lack of measures to nurture subprojects at the inter-village level. To promote an enabling institutional environment for decentralized rural development, the institutional capacity building component was based on five major areas of intervention: the establishment and strengthening of 45 provincial technical consultation platforms, capacity-building for service providers, development of decision-making instruments, assisting in the rural decentralization process, and support to institutions tasked with decentralization. The land tenure security pilot component encountered difficulties that necessitated strategic reorientation at mid-term (2004).

Notwithstanding, this component developed a practical guide on enhancing land tenure security, supported a national forum on rural land tenure, drafted a national strategy and action plan, and developed approaches to enhance land tenure security in connection with community investments and the peaceful resolution of disputes between farmers and herders.

Project relevance, effectiveness and efficiency. The PNGT2 supported relevant interventions at the village, provincial and national levels that responded well to the needs of most of the rural population and were in line with government policies and strategies. The experiment with transferring project management to the local village level was an ambitious and bold proposition.

However, the participatory planning tools used by the project did not provide for an adequate targeting mechanism to ensure inclusion of the poorest and most marginalized rural populations. The effectiveness of PNGT2 was deemed satisfactory in light of its specific objectives. The project was very effective in improving poor rural farmers’ access to social infrastructure. Useful physical results were achieved in a large number of villages in terms of health care, education and access to potable water. The project was also quite successful in improving the management capacity of beneficiary groups and, in particular, the capacity of CVGTs to manage local subprojects. The cost-effectiveness of publicly funded investments at the local level was improved, as was the absorptive capacity of rural areas. In terms of institutional strengthening, the project has successfully supported the decentralization process at the national level, and stimulated consultations between rural development partners at the provincial level. However, project effectiveness has been sometimes weak in terms of quality, namely, regarding the strengthening of local capacity to manage community resources and infrastructure. The land tenure security component was isolated from other project components and was overly ambitious, and it did not achieve the results expected.

Management arrangements for this large-scale project proved efficient in the use of human resources. The local investment fund-financed subprojects managed by village communities were found more efficient than other local investments directly managed by rural development projects or the Government.

Impact. The first phase of PNGT2 achieved visible impacts at three levels inasmuch as it: (i) equipped 3/8 of the country’s villages with essential infrastructure and social services; (ii) created human and social conditions favouring village-level subproject management; and (iii) provided an unquestionable contribution to the decentralization process.

However, because the project lacked a firm and effective targeting strategy, it encountered difficulties in reaching the most disadvantaged groups, in particular women and young people. The mechanisms for cost-sharing by the community of investments and services, as promoted by the project, were intended to promote ownership and better management of investments by beneficiaries. Cost-sharing, however, promoted what were sometimes irregular practices (such as underhand recovery of part of the village’s contribution from the local entrepreneurs). It also led to inequalities in the rural populations’ right of access to public goods in favour of the less poor. The impact on shared natural resource management (NRM) was unsatisfactory, because NRM activities were not usually accorded priority in annual investment plans – for two reasons.  First, as a general rule, subprojects were confined to individual villages and one-year periods, which is often inappropriate for shared NRM initiatives. Second, rural communities usually gave preference to hardware investments (such as infrastructure) that called for relatively less time and effort.

Sustainability. The evaluation noted a series of favourable indicators for the sustainability of project results, including: (i) positive political and institutional changes regarding decentralization supported by the project; (ii) ownership by communities of subprojects resulting from village-level planning; and (iii) the emergence of community organizations (CVGT and O&M committees) that will continue to use and maintain infrastructure built under the project. However, certain types of community infrastructure were not fully utilized, and O&M mechanisms for many investments remained fragile. Post-project funding of provincial technical consultation platform meetings remained an unresolved issue.

Performance by partners. The Government and its different institutions performed satisfactorily in terms of steering this large-scale project with considerable challenges relating to decentralization. IFAD contributed a significant share of project financing but has played only a minor role in its design, implementation and monitoring, and delegated supervision to its main cofinancier (IDA). The Fund was therefore unable to ensure that its objectives and specific concerns in terms of combating poverty and vulnerability and targeting the poorest, as presented in the President’s Report and Recommendation to the Executive Board, were fully addressed. IFAD did not give adequate attention to the monitoring and analysis of project experiences, and did not make sufficient effort to ensure full complementarity and synergy with its other interventions in Burkina Faso in order to fill certain gaps in PNGT2 design.

IDA provided most of the project design, and adjustments were made as needed following the mid-term review. However, IDA did not fully respect its commitments to IFAD as its cooperating institution, i.e.: communications with IFAD and other project partners was poor; delays in non-objection statements were frequent; supervision reports were of poor quality; there was no disbursement of IFAD funds during the first project years, etc. In the absence of efforts on the part of donors, including IDA, donor partnership and coordination remained below expectations and did not lead to the desired synergy.

Main recommendations approved by all partners

The evaluation makes five recommendations. The first relates to IFAD’s further involvement in the next PNGT2 phase. The other four concern specific strategic issues to be considered by the Government and IDA for the next project phase.

Recommendation 1: Further IFAD involvement in the next PNGT2 phases. The evaluation recommends that IFAD continue to participate in PNGT2. In this regard, it is important for IFAD to engage in a dialogue with the Government and IDA to ensure that the recommendations emerging from the evaluation are taken on board by the main partners both fully and in a timely manner. It is recommended that IFAD should:

• Base any future IFAD participation on an in-depth analysis of the design and preliminary lessons learned from the second phase. In order to optimize its value added, IFAD should identify a specific niche of support, either thematic or geographic, in line with its objectives and strategies (country strategic opportunities paper for Burkina Faso, regional strategy, IFAD Strategic Framework 2007-2010 strategies and policies on targeting, gender and innovation, etc.) and in synergy with the other elements of its country programme (projects, technical assistance grants and policy dialogue).
• Fully involve itself in the supervision of its intervention and in implementation support to PNGT2, to reduce reaction time in the event of any procedural blockages and ensure that its objectives and concerns are better taken into account. This would also allow IFAD to contribute experiences in certain key project areas (targeting of vulnerable populations, community development, support to small-scale rural entrepreneurs, management of natural resources, land tenure security, pastoral development, etc.). Thus, IFAD should make full use of this large-scale project to scale up its innovative experiences in its other projects, both under way and planned.
  
• Derive more value from its future participation in PNGT2 to fully draw on lessons learned in terms of project approaches and multiple issues relating to reducing poverty and inequality, in order to build these lessons into current and future IFAD projects in Burkina Faso and elsewhere in the region.

Recommendation 2: Inclusion of the most vulnerable population groups. The partners involved in the next phase of the project should ensure that the poorest, most marginalized and vulnerable among the active rural population fully participate in project interventions and share in all project benefits. In particular, it would be useful to:

• Ensure a better understanding by the project of the mechanisms of social and economic exclusion and marginalization affecting the most vulnerable social groups in subproject design and implementation.
• Develop participatory approaches to local planning and M&E that ensure full participation by vulnerable or marginalized groups in consensus- building and assign an unequivocal place to reducing vulnerability among such groups. Village and community-based development plans should systematically include a social solidarity thrust with a specific strategy and support actions for vulnerable and marginalized active groups (e.g. micro loans for income-generating activities, special training, transport means to facilitate mobility and access to markets, etc.). M&E should make it possible to appreciate the quality of consensus-building and inclusion/exclusion and to assess impact on vulnerable groups.
• Provide for financing rules that assign a specific place to subprojects aimed at reducing vulnerability and exclusion, as well as a system of incentives to promote such projects (competitions for the best subproject, minimum quota of subprojects favouring women, etc.).

Recommendation 3: Empowerment of rural communities in the recent decentralization context. It is important that the next phase of the project should work to further develop village community capacities to ensure the quality of services delivered by the rural communes and public technical services. For this, it is deemed necessary to:

• Develop appropriate facilitation methods to promote effective accountability on the part of elected officials and village development councils (VDCs) in developing, financing, implementing and monitoring their projects.  The future project phase should therefore accord greater importance and financial resources to individual and collective empowerment (at the VDC and municipal council level) in accordance with the General Code on Territorial Entities, the Decree on VDCs and the VDC guide. This should include feedback mechanisms and accountability at all levels of planning and management.
• Support a shift in the roles of public technical services, refocusing their mission around advising local governments and supporting the management of commune-level and local subprojects. The next phase of PNGT2 should help set up a system to deliver public and private services managed by, and driven by demand from, rural citizens. Capacity-building for these services should be underpinned by training and promotion of collaboration protocols (for technical and advisory assistance) among local governments and public technical services, in the framework of implementing community development plans.
• Ensure that village and community-based planning approaches place greater emphasis on endogenous potential and initiatives to develop local resources (natural resources, human and cultural resources, and so on). Accompanying measures should incorporate endogenous local actions and organizations fully and systematically into planning, to avoid limiting subprojects to those investments that are eligible for external financing.

Recommendation 4: Sustainability of local investments. To ensure the sustainability of project investments, the next project phase should:

• Adopt cost-sharing mechanisms that are equitable and adapted to the specificities of each investment and its maintenance requirements. The PNGT2 should more closely examine how community contributions have been collected and whether such contributions have favoured sustainable infrastructure management. While respecting the principle of cost-sharing as defined in the Policy Letter on Decentralized Rural Development, the way it is being implemented should be revisited in light of decentralization and changes in local society. The principle of financial cost-sharing as a condition for acquiring project financing should be highly nuanced and applied in direct relation to the fiscal system set up by rural communes in charge of the management of a large number of local investments. Moreover, a clause should be included in contracts with private enterprises requiring them to use unskilled local labour and to buy materials available locally from communities. This will enable funding to be injected locally, and is fairer to those who contribute their efforts to the common good.
• Promote access by populations to adequate means for maximizing investments. Local investment subprojects should ensure that adequate means are accessible to the population to maximize their use of the facilities constructed. Such means, which could include technical expertise or equipment or inputs, should be estimated when planning subprojects. If not available locally, the subproject should foresee measures to ensure sustainable access to such external means for the community.
• Provide adequate coaching to ensure investment management and maintenance. The sustainability of investments presupposes significant coaching, well adapted to the specific O&M requirements of each type of infrastructure. The performance of communal fiscal systems will play a determining role in the sustainability of local subproject management. The PNGT2 should therefore strongly support communes in setting up adapted and equitable local fiscal systems that are acceptable to citizens and would replenish a communal maintenance fund for municipal infrastructure

Recommendation 5: Natural resources management. The community-driven development approach should be adjusted to more easily accommodate community NRM subprojects that go beyond the geographic boundaries of one village or one rural commune, and take longer than one year to implement. Land tenure security should be built as a cross-cutting issue into each local investment subproject. It would therefore be useful in the next project phase to:

• Develop appropriate accompanying measures and financing instruments to support the inter-village and inter-community consensus building process in order to encourage users and decision-makers to adapt natural resource management rules. The process of building up a consensus among natural resource users and owner-managers needs to involve elected commune officials, socio-professional organizations and public technical services. It should be based on a sound analysis of the resource dynamics concerned, and on existing operating approaches and management rules. The process should involve all villages involved in the shared natural resource (watershed, sylvopastoral area, transhumance axis, grazing area), and lead to local agreements on natural resource management, conservation and use, in order to ensure the resource’s sustainability. Supporting such a process calls for work on a time scale that goes beyond the typical annual cycle of village subprojects, and requires a special kind of financing.
• Mainstream land tenure security as a cross-cutting theme into all local investment subprojects. An in-depth evaluation of pilot experiences in the first phase should be carried out in order to measure expected and unexpected results of PNGT2 interventions. Once the rural communes have taken on the central role attributed to them under the General Code on Territorial Entities, the project should focus its support on land tenure management at that level. Support to the General Directorate for Land Tenure and Farmer Organizations should help define accompanying measures for land tenure management by the communes pursuant to the provisions of the new legislation now being finalized.

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1/ The project is called “Deuxième Programme National de Gestion des Terroirs – phase 1” in Burkina Faso.