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.
