Contribution to poverty alleviation

Notwithstanding the remarkable growth in national income witnessed during the last two decades, Yemen suffers from endemic poverty caused by a poor resource base, and population pressure. Concentration of ownership of strategic natural resources compounds the problem.

The decrease in rural poverty which occurred in Yemen in the last decades is essentially dependent on external factors and to a lesser extent on productivity gains in agriculture. As a result the achievements obtained in poverty alleviation are fragile and may be shortlived because of the combined action of international tensions (which reduce expatriate job opportunities and the amount of aid available), internal population growth, slow productivity growth and, last but not least, the introduction of labor saving technology, particularly in the low lands.

 Approaches to poverty alleviation

So far, poverty alleviation has been considered as an ultimate goal in Yemen's development strategy but no targets for poverty alleviation have been set, such as for the national food self sufficiency objective. The latter remains the priority objective of the Government's agricultural development policy. This applies equally for both the ex-North and the South, despite their sharply contrasted economic systems and macro economic policy orientations. Projects were therefore primarily expected to contribute to economic growth: they were designed to increase agricultural output and raise general incomes but did not have a poverty alleviation focus per se. This is not to say that they did not have an effect on the state of rural poverty.

While the first generation of projects (1979-1984) was rightly aiming at institutional building, the second generation of projects (1987-1992) could - within the gradually improving institutional framework - build a much stronger poverty alleviation dimension. Of the two IFAD-initiated projects of the latter period, the Agricultural Credit Project (253-YA) has been facing the difficulties referred to in para.[33 (and analyzed in detail in paras. 116-120). The other project is in the Eastern Region (228-YD) and has been under implementation for two and a half years only before the evaluation mission. It was therefore too early to examine its impact on poverty reduction. IFAD should however be credited for having over time developed and incorporated into its project designs a set of approaches and instrumentalities aiming at reaching the target groups it is most concerned with, including rural women. These efforts have not always been fully effective in reaching the poor due to tough social, political and institutional constraints. Also, in view of the lack of previous experience in this field, making targetting objectives operational is, by necessity, a trial and error process which cannot be expected to quickly yield positive results. Through general as well as specific recommendations this evaluation is part of such a process.

Constraints to targetting

Too much was expected from rural women's development programmes that had to function under socially unfavourable conditions. These conditions, among others, include the limited number of Yemeni women available to manage programmes, the difficulty in identifying Arabic speaking female experts and the scarcity of qualified women for training as extension agents. Limited progress in these programmes could also be attributed to a lack of local funds.

Certain types of projects are simply unsuitable for targetting according to IFAD'D's criteria. Experience confirms that the injection of productive capital, where ownership of strategic natural resources is concentrated, primarily benefits the wealthiest and increases social inequality. Hence the recommendation made below (para. 57) to avoid in Yemen endeavours aiming at increasing agricultural productivity in areas where land and ownership are very unevenly shared.

Political commitment to the equity objective has not been sufficient; and the trickle down approach to poverty alleviation is still popular within the administrative structures. IFAD's project impact has been constrained by the absence of national institutions with a poverty alleviation focus.

Overall impact

Starting from an apparently simple and straightforward question on the contribuon of IFAD supported projects to the reduction of poverty, it appeared to the mission that there is no simple and global answer to what is in fact a very complex and multifaceted issue in which IFAD intervention is but a modest element.

While it was possible to reach some understanding of how the various projects interacted with their environment, it was often difficult to distinguish the specific contribution of the projects from other factors which had an impact in the project area. The report does, however, reflect on some of the more tangible effects of individual projects on agricultural production within the limits imposed by the availability of relevant data, as well as by the purpose of the present exercise (Chapter[IX).

The projects' impact has been limited by a combination of interrelated factors that impinged on the sustainability of the achievements:

• the implementation of projects in the absence of government sub-sectoral programmes which could have provided for the necessary support during project lifetime and for their follow-up thereafter;
• the diversion of scarce budgetary resources to projects at the expense of existing structures and programmes in a context marked by a continuous decrease of the share of the rural/agricultural sector in public expenditures as the economy diversified;
• the low starting level of institutional capacities which the projects often improved considerably, but locally, and sometimes only temporarily. In some cases, however, inadequate project organisation arrangements did little to help overcome this constraint;
• the limited resource-base (combined with the absence of any significant institutional framework for natural resources management) could not always sustain the effects of both public and private resource mobilisation investments;
• Government policies which constrained producer initiative in South Yemen, or subsidised public services at the expense of the sustainability of the institutions in charge of delivering these services, for example credit services in North Yemen. In addition, the former Governments of North and South Yemen adopted agricultural development orientations which privileged areas of high potential, and irrigation in particular, despite the fact that a majority of the farmers derive their main income from the rainfed sector. This policy has had, as a result, a negative effect on the evolution of income distribution; and
• the insufficient participation of the beneficiaries in project design and implementation which resulted in socially sub-optimal/unmanageable designs of some rural and productive infrastructure and which did not instil a sense of ownership among the beneficiaries. Non-participatory approaches proved to be an important factor behind problems such as insufficient infrastructure operation and maintenance and of inequitable distribution of project benefits.