Introduction

Objectives, approach and methodology of the evaluation. The IFAD Office of Evaluation carried out a completion evaluation of the Roots and Tubers Development Programme (PDRT) in Benin with the objectives of providing bases for assessing programme performance and contributing to the learning needed by the programme partners with a view to preparing and implementing other rural development projects and programmes in the country and elsewhere. The evaluation focused on five aspects: the programme’s performance, its impact on rural poverty, its sustainability, its innovative character and the performance of partners. It was carried out from mid-February to mid-November 2009, while the main evaluation mission took place from 27 April to 22 May 2009. The evaluation drew on four main types of sources: bibliographical research, self-evaluation by the Government and IFAD’s Programme Management Department, interviews with the programme participants and partners at all levels, and direct observation in the field. The evaluation team visited 20 programme intervention villages (VIP) in five of the country’s departments. Throughout the process, the evaluators maintained a frank, open dialogue with programme partners. The approach enabled them not only to gain a better understanding of the context in which the programme was designed and executed, but also to engage the partners in the evaluation reflections and in the formulation of its lessons and final recommendations to ensure their taking ownership of these lessons and recommendations.

National and sectoral context. Approximately 59 per cent of Benin’s estimated population of 9 million lives in rural areas. Although the country has a very high demographic growth rate, economic growth during the past ten years has been weak and the overall incidence of rural poverty rose from 25 per cent in 1994/95 to more than 40 per cent in 2006. Women’s participation in social and economic life is hampered by their lower educational level, their greater household responsibilities and a sociocultural status that is unfavourable to their development outside the family circle.

Although its contribution to GDP is decreasing, agriculture is still the main economic activity and source of income for more than half the population. It is still basically a subsistence agriculture and suffers from major human, social, technical, economic and institutional constraints, so that despite the country’s overall cereal self-sufficiency, there are still pockets of food and nutritional insecurity.

There is major pressure on the environment from farming practices that are inappropriate in the context of a growing population density, leading to shrinking forest cover, reduced soil fertility, etc.

The main root and tuber (R&T) species grown in Benin are cassava and yam. Cassava is a fairly undemanding plant most often grown at the end of a crop rotation or in combination with cereals (especially maize). Its production is concentrated in the densely populated zones of the country’s south and central regions. During the 1990s, cassava production more than doubled, thanks especially to an increase in the areas planted to this crop, but also to an increase in yields brought about by such elements as a growth in demand, the decline of cotton, popularization of improved varieties, intensification of cropping techniques and mechanization of on-farm or nearby processing.

Over the same period, cassava became more a cash crop than a subsistence crop for a growing proportion of the country’s farmers, while its cultivation spread considerably toward the north of the country. In 2001, the Government launched its Cassava Sector Development Programme with the goals of encouraging underemployed young people in urban areas to return to the countryside and providing its growing (urban) population with a source of inexpensive calories. Cassava and its main marketed by-product, gari, are produced throughout the region, with Benin being a very small producer compared with Nigeria. The prices of cassava and its by-products fluctuate considerably from year to year, following an approximately four-year cycle, although prices are also affected by external factors (for example media campaigns by the Government and project managers, Nigerian protectionist measures and the rise in food prices that started in 2007). Yams are grown especially in the centre and north of Benin. They are also a major crop throughout the region and are Nigeria’s main foodcrop. Their high requirements in terms of soil fertility mean that they have traditionally been grown as a shifting crop or as the lead crop in rotations. Since the start of the 1990s, yam production has more than doubled, essentially through the expansion of the area planted to this crop. Yams have not enjoyed the same technical advances as cassava, nor the same level of attention on the part of the Government. They are subject to very marked fluctuations in price from year to year.

IFAD’s Benin country programme. Since 1978, IFAD has financed nine rural development projects and programmes in Benin, for a total loan amount of US$99.3 million and a total cost of US$230.6 million. IFAD’s first strategic opportunities programme (COSOP) for Benin dates from 1997 and recommended that the Fund’s interventions should focus on support for marketing through village organizations and on institution-building for rural financial intermediary organizations. The 2006–2010 COSOP focuses on support for local initiatives that can increase income and improve the standard of living of the rural poor, and thus chimes with the country’s own rural development strategy. There are at present two IFAD projects under way in Benin and a third in preparation. In March 2007 IFAD launched the Regional Cassava Processing and Marketing Initiative (IRTCM), which seeks to promote development of the cassava industry in Western and Central Africa by providing ad hoc support, particularly to the projects it is financing in the region (in Benin, Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria).

Origin and key dates of PDRT. Identification of the programme in March 1999 was a response to the Government of Benin’s request to IFAD regarding a cassava sector development project to reduce the dependence of the national economy on cotton. Bearing in mind its twofold concern to improve food security and eradicate poverty, IFAD suggested that the programme should be expanded to include all roots and tubers, a participatory development approach should be adopted and the target group should be chosen in line with its own specific mandate. Although PDRT was approved by IFAD’s Executive Board in June 2000, activities on the ground did not really get under way until the middle of 2003. The mid-term review of the programme was carried out in October 2006. The programme was concluded in September 2008, and the IFAD and West African Development Bank (BOAD) loans were closed in March 2009.

Programme objectives and components. According to the IFAD loan agreement and the programme appraisal report, the general objective of the programme was to “make a sustainable contribution to poverty eradication by increasing the income and improving the standard of living of the most vulnerable rural households and rural women”. To this end, the programme was to “contribute, through actions subsidiary to those already undertaken, to the rationalization of root and tuber production, processing and marketing activities in zones suitable for their cultivation and affected by poverty”. The programme’s specific objectives (OS) were: OS 1) to improve the productivity of root and tuber crops, combining this with a sustainable improvement in soil fertility; OS 2) to improve the productivity of small-scale processing and the quality of products; and OS 3) to create favourable marketing conditions, thus benefiting the target group. PDRT had four components: (i) support to improved root and tuber productivity (22 per cent of programme costs); (ii) support to primary processing and marketing (7 per cent); (iii) support to grass-roots institutions (52 per cent); and (iv) programme management (19 per cent).

Programme intervention zone and target group. Although the programme had a national scope, it had to focus its interventions on four agro-ecological zones that were suited to the cultivation of roots and tubers and had a major concentration of rural poverty. Its target group was made up of three categories: rural households with little land or land that was hard to farm and was too small to ensure an acceptable standard of living (approximately 60,000 households), disadvantaged women with difficulty in maintaining their means of livelihood (approximately 100,000 women) and young people without schooling (an undefined number).

Financing and institutional set-up. The total cost of PDRT was estimated at US$19.3 million, or FCAF 12.93 billion. The programme was financed by a loan from IFAD under particularly favourable terms (68 per cent) and a loan from BOAD (20 per cent) on a pari passu basis, together with contributions from the Government (11.4 per cent) and the programme beneficiaries (0.4 per cent). The supervising ministry for the programme was the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries (MAEP), while BOAD was responsible for administering the loan and supervising the programme on behalf of IFAD. The Programme Management Unit (PMU) was based in Parakou and had two regional branches (in Bohicon and Djougou). The PMU was responsible for supervising implementation, with direct execution of activities being entrusted to a large number of public and private service providers.

Intervention strategy. The programme sought to “mobilize the major potential for progress present at every level” in root and tuber production and marketing, focusing particularly on cassava and to a lesser degree yams. The aim was to help the target group to produce at a lower unit cost and with better quality. The main locus of programme intervention was the village, where outreach workers were to use a participatory approach in helping communities to identify their needs and draw up a local root and tuber development plan. A local consultation committee elected by the community was the body that represented the village vis-à-vis the programme. The PDRT managers hoped to reach the whole of the village’s target group through producers’ groups and (female) processors’ groups, which were to provide liaison. The programme also financed some major research and development activities in order to identify and develop the most effective production and processing technologies. A network of technical consultants and local trainers was to provide training to the members of producers’ groups and processors’ groups.

Implementation results

The programme intervened in a total of 312 villages (out of the 408 anticipated), with support being distributed over three successive generations; 136 of these villages were located in the southern region and 176 in the northern region. On the recommendation of the mid-term review, the fourth generation of intervention villages (96 villages) was not covered because of a reduction in the funds available under the IFAD loan following a deterioration in the value of special drawing rights as against the CFA franc. The vast majority of the programme’s resources and efforts were devoted to cassava and to a lesser degree yams.

Support to improved root and tuber productivity. Through its advisory assistance mechanism, the programme reached approximately 8,600 producers (less than 60 per cent of the number anticipated) who were members of producers’ groups (on average two such groups per programme intervention village). The total area of the application plots on which members of producers’ groups used the advocated technologies reached its maximum of 2,960 hectares in 2007 (40 per cent of the area anticipated). The technologies popularized mainly concerned sustainable cassava and yam production, and particularly the management of soil fertility. At the same time, PDRT financed a research and development programme concerning the cultivation of roots and tubers, divided between Benin’s National Agricultural Research Institute and the Benin research station of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). The work carried out at the research stations and on outside sites was complemented by on-farm trials with the support of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries’ Directorate of Agricultural Advice and Operational Training. The research focused mainly on improved varieties and fertilizer formulas specifically for cassava and yam. PDRT set up a network of multipliers of certified cassava cuttings in all the programme intervention villages, while also providing support to 45 pilot producers of yam seed.

Support to primary processing and marketing. The programme’s advisory assistance mechanism trained one processors’ group per village and 18 intervillage marketing associations. The members of these organizations – about 7,800 people (78 per cent of the number anticipated), most of them women – received training in conservation, storage, processing and marketing techniques. For example, PDRT lent cassava and yam processing equipment to 90 processors’ groups (less than 30 per cent of the number anticipated) and small restaurants for a maximum of six months. In this way, it fostered the purchase of 53 items of cassava processing equipment (motorized graters and screw presses) out of the 564 anticipated (less than 10 per cent) in 45 villages – some by processors’ groups, but mainly by private microentrepreneurs. At the same time, PDRT provided finance to the National Agricultural Research Institute and IITA for a research and development programme focusing specifically on post-harvest aspects of roots and tubers. A total of 12 research and development trial layouts were carried through to completion (out of the 26 started). With regard to the diversification of cassava by-products, PDRT promoted the development of production standards for ten by-products (gari, tapioca, starch, bread-making flour etc.) by the Benin Standards and Quality Management Centre. Starting in 2007, it also enabled some one hundred bakers to be trained in techniques for incorporating cassava flour into bread and various pastry products. In collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries’ Directorate of Food and Applied Nutrition, the programme launched a certification process for cassava and yam flour for use in bread. Under the aegis of PDRT, a partnership contract was also made with a private enterprise in 2008 for the production of cassava bread-making flour and mixed flour. Lastly, PDRT carried out various activities intended to help its beneficiaries to market their products and increase their profit margin, through such initiatives as market studies, the negotiation of partnerships with processing factories, collaboration with the National Food Security Support Office and local radios with a view to collecting and broadcasting information on prices, and the establishment of four gari markets

Support to grass-roots institutions. PDRT: (i) supported the formulation of local root and tuber development plans in the 312 intervention villages and incorporation of these into communal development plans; (ii) established 312 local consultation committees and producers’ groups, processors’ groups and intervillage marketing associations; (iii) supervised the creation, starting in 2007, of 5 departmental unions of cassava cutting producers (out of the 11 anticipated), local cassava producers’ groups (a development of the initial producers’ groups) and local cassava processors’ groups (a development of the initial processors’ groups), together with corresponding umbrella organizations at commune and department levels; and (iv) trained members of committees and groups in the running of associations and in administrative, financial and accounts management (5,304 members of the offices of local consultation committees, producers’ groups, processors’ groups and intervillage marketing associations). The programme established and provided training for an indigenous advisory assistance mechanism, comprising 547 local trainers specializing in root and tuber production and processing and 550 literacy teachers, under the supervision of outreach workers from the service providers responsible for the zone and the departmental coordination offices for literacy training and adult education. It called on these departmental coordination offices to draw up an initial and functional literacy training programme in local languages and the training of literacy teachers. A total of 7,762 members of producers’ groups and processors’ groups received literacy training in the local language, while about 1,000 members received courses in basic French.

The groups’ access to credit was informally facilitated by the service providers responsible for the zone, inasmuch as the programme’s initial strategy was never implemented because of the delay in establishment of the national microfinance strategy. By 30 September 2008, 217 groups had received loans from microfinance institutions for a total of nearly CFAF 177 million, with a 100 per cent repayment rate. Almost all the loans obtained by the groups were short term and most of them for cassava processors’ groups. The access of producers’ groups to even short-term loans is less frequent. Microfinance institutions have shown a general reluctance to grant medium- and long-term loans to enable groups to purchase equipment.

Community root and tuber investment funds. The needs of the intervention villages for infrastructures for the processing and storage of roots and tubers were identified on the basis of local root and tuber development plans and an inventory of existing infrastructures. The local consultation committees had to submit an application to the programme managers, who then selected from such applications the microinfrastructures to be installed. The communities (especially members of processors’ groups) had to contribute 10 per cent of the investments, mainly in kind. In this way, PDRT cofinanced the construction of 104 processing workshops, 26 large-diameter wells, 37 sales barns, 12 storage warehouses and 10 straw huts to store yams. It also financed rehabilitation of 135 kilometres of rural roads (out of the 260 kilometres anticipated at the design stage and the 130 kilometres in the mid-term review) and three river crossing structures. Maintenance of the infrastructures was entrusted to various grass-roots institutions that received training for this purpose, for example processors’ groups for workshops, traders’ groups for warehouses, and local maintenance committees for roads. The last-named were also provided with road-mending materials

Programme performance

Relevance. The general objective and the initial target group of the programme were in line with IFAD’s mandate, targeting policy (2006) and country strategy. The programme objectives chimed with the Government’s poverty eradication and rural development policy and strategy. The intervention strategy had various relevant aspects capable of contributing to achievement of the programme objectives: a participatory approach, capacity-building for grass-roots organizations, on-the-job training etc. The programme’s focus on cassava was justified, as was the combination of support to production and to small-scale processing in the same villages. A large part of the programme’s resources and efforts were allocated for the benefit of rural women, which was intended to have major effects in terms of an improvement in gender equality and economic development in general.

Nevertheless, analysis of the socio-economic and production situation of the initial programme target group was defective, as was also the case with demonstration of the link between the development of roots and tubers and a reduction in poverty. The production objectives and specific constraints of the targeted producers (poor access to land, inputs, services and markets) were barely taken into account. The programme’s targeting strategy, combining geographical targeting, community targeting and self-targeting (through the very nature of the support provided), was poorly developed and largely inappropriate. The design did not take account of the large fluctuation in root and tuber prices, which makes them risky cash crops in economic terms. Moreover, it did not propose any measure to avoid usurpation by the most powerful stakeholders in the sector to the detriment of the targeted small producers and processors.

Effectiveness. The mission observed that achievement of the programme objectives had been far from sufficient for small producers with little land or strongly degraded land and for disadvantaged women. However, certain objectives were partially achieved for better-off producers and women processors who can, in absolute terms, always be considered poor, although they have greater physical, human and social capital, and are thus less vulnerable than the initial target group. The evaluation of effectiveness takes this “expanded” target group into account, while not losing sight of the people targeted at the outset.

The programme speeded up the popularization of improved cassava varieties and more intensive cropping techniques for roots and tubers, mainly among farmers who grow them for sale and have the necessary inputs. This helped to raise yields by 30 per cent for cassava (against the 75 per cent anticipated) and 26 per cent for yams (against the 50 per cent anticipated) in the intervention villages. However, soil fertility is still suffering degradation. The programme also helped to popularize “improved” gari throughout the country and traditional cassava by-products in the northern region. The use of privately owned processing equipment is widespread in Benin, but PDRT was basically unable to help poor women to purchase their own equipment. The vast majority of the processing workshops built with programme support are used very little if at all because of problems over ownership, management and above all technical design and equipment. The quality of the root and tuber by-products produced in the programme intervention villages also remains a major cause for concern.

Thanks to PDRT, there has been better circulation of information on root and tuber prices in the intervention villages. The marketing infrastructures built or rehabilitated by the programme (roads, warehouses, barns) help in market disposal of produce. Market disposal of yams is facilitated by the growth in demand for pounded yam, especially in urban centres. However, producers and processors still find it hard to make the quantities produced match demand, resulting in major price fluctuations. Prices have recently risen, especially in the southern region, as a result of the global rise in food prices. Attempts to establish public-private partnerships and gari markets intended to facilitate market disposal have met with broad failure.

Efficiency. The delay between approval of the IFAD loan agreement and its coming into force was within the average for the country and the region. However, the programme suffered a major delay prior to inception of on-the-ground activities, thus reducing the real duration of interventions by a year as compared with the time anticipated. The cost of the infrastructures built by the programme was comparable with the standard costs observed in Benin, but the utility of some of them (processing workshops) has proved slight. Competition and the results-based payment of service providers ensured a good quality/price ratio for the services received. However, the direct benefit of the outreach activities and training is very limited for the programme’s target group. The internal rate of economic return of the programme is lower than anticipated because of the fairly low rate of physical implementation of many programme interventions.

Impact on rural poverty

The income and assets of producers’ group members have increased thanks to the rise in root and tuber prices. PDRT encouraged them to increase or at least maintain the areas under roots and tubers and to intensify their production, whereas cassava production was steadily declining in the country as a whole. Processors’ group members’ income and assets have also increased thanks to the rise in prices (in the south), but the processors themselves note a general trend toward a reduction in their profit margin as a result of the progressive fall in by-product prices as compared with the price of raw materials and the need to hire mechanized grating and pressing services from small private entrepreneurs (95 per cent of whom are men).

The programme has had an indirect impact on the income of its initial target group through the creation of jobs in the intervention villages. In terms of

human and social capital, group members’ knowledge and know-how have improved, thanks to the training organized under the programme. However, membership of groups was motivated mainly by a desire to gain access to the various types of support granted under the programme, which was unsuccessful in encouraging the groups to evolve into lobbying associations or service cooperatives. Moreover, the poorest producers – the initial programme target – were poorly represented in PDRT groups because they found it too hard to meet the requirements, could not draw full advantage from the groups’ activities and did not find solutions to their underlying problems in them. Women’s empowerment has increased, mainly as a result of the increase in their income, which means that this progress is confined to the better-off women who were able to draw full benefit from the various types of support provided by the programme. The vast majority of female processors are still therefore largely dependent on men (root and tuber growers, owners of processing equipment or transporter-traders who dictate the price of by-products).

In terms of job opportunities created, the programme had an indirect and fairly weak impact on the food security of households living in food insecurity and not benefiting from programme interventions. At the national level, cassava production has been falling since 2003, although yields have risen by 30 per cent. Yam production has risen slightly, but yields have not. With regard to the environment, a growing awareness can be seen among members of producers’ groups, together with greater knowledge regarding soil fertility management. However, taken overall, the programme has had little impact in terms of the adoption of more environmentally friendly production and processing practices. Lastly, with regard to institutions and policies, the private and public service providers engaged by the programme were able to boost their capacities in terms of outreach activities and the supply of advice in rural areas. Little has changed regarding producers’ and processors’ access to credit. The programme made a substantial contribution to formulation of the national policy on the promotion of root and tuber crops. However, the policy is still too vague regarding optimization of the major potential of small-scale root and tuber producers and processors.

Other criteria

Sustainability. The programme sustainability strategy was referred to only very implicitly in the design documents, although “ensuring the sustainability of results” was the objective of the support to grass-roots institutions component described in the logical framework. The sustainability of advances regarding agricultural productivity and the processing of roots and tubers, and thus the income of the households involved, depends to a large extent on how the market develops, which is hard to predict at this juncture. The extent to which the target group will be able to draw ongoing benefit from a possible continuation of these advances will depend largely on the State’s policies and strategies, which are still uncertain. The mechanism of using local trainers is basically no longer operational.

The survival rate of the groups and associations set up under PDRT is very low. There is ongoing environmental degradation caused by cropping and processing activities. Boosting the capacities of private and public service providers (NGOs and consulting firms in the first case and the Regional Agricultural Promotion Centre, the Directorate of Agricultural Advice and Operational Training, the Directorate of Agriculture and the National Agricultural Research Institute in the second) should promote the institutional sustainability of PDRT.

However, these institutions are still to a large extent dependent on funding from projects for their operating costs. Moreover, for a number of reasons the private sector is not (so far) interested in large-scale investments in the root and tuber subsector. Lastly, despite a number of circumstances that are favourable to ongoing development of the subsector and to which PDRT made a certain contribution, there is little likelihood that the disadvantaged households initially targeted by the programme will take part in any further phase of this development, beyond their role of providing cheap labour as and when needed.

Innovation, popularization and scaling up. PDRT contributed to the development of technical innovations by research institutions and promoted the popularization of various technical and institutional innovations in the programme intervention villages. It also tried out certain promising institutional innovations regarding contractual partnerships. However, few innovations have been extended beyond the programme intervention villages, largely because of government services’ lack of human and financial resources and the scant interest of the subsector for private investors. The programme also introduced few innovations in direct favour of its target group, particularly in the spheres of targeting, access to land and the promotion of private services.

Performance of partners

IFAD. IFAD set a reduction in the poverty of the most vulnerable rural households as the general objective of the programme, stressing a participatory approach based on grass-roots organizations.

However, it paid too little attention during the design and implementation phases to achievement of the general objective and effective reaching of the target group. The Fund provided useful but fairly limited support to BOAD with regard to administration of the loan and supervision and technical support for the programme. Its contribution to policy dialogue in Benin was small, although it did contribute, through the Regional Cassava Processing and Marketing Initiative, to the sharing of experience among projects receiving its financing and to the extension of the programme’s impact beyond Benin. The Fund also effectively advocated the acceleration of procurement and put measures in place to consolidate programme advances through its new Rural Development Support Programme (PADER) and Rural Economic Growth Support Project (PACER).

Government. The Government played a fairly minor role in designing the programme and supervising its execution because of a clear lack of capacities within the supervising ministry. The PMU displayed good coordination skills, especially in the management of contracts with the various service providers. On the other hand, it had difficulties in administrative and financial management. The Government’s financial contribution was considerably more than it had indicated in its initial commitment. The Government and the PMU paid far too little attention to the programme’s general objective and target group.

BOAD. BOAD performed satisfactorily in administration of the loan, albeit in the first years with considerable delays in processing calls for tender and requests for the withdrawal of funds. The supervision missions were much appreciated by the PMU, although the resulting reports remained fairly descriptive, contributing little more than the activity reports produced within the context of the programme. This was largely a result of the extreme brevity and infrequency of supervision missions. Nor did BOAD pay the necessary attention to ensuring that the programme made progress toward achieving its general objective and reaching its target group.

Conclusions and recommendations

Conclusions

PDRT produced a considerable number of promising results based on the development of roots and tubers.

Its strong points lie in its innovative character, its participatory and practical approach, its attention to the lot of rural women and its institutional impact.

However, the programme contributed little to achievement of its general objective of sustainably reducing the poverty of the most vulnerable households. This failure was a result of the considerable discrepancy between the objective and the types of intervention promoted. The programme partners were unable to correct the aim once the programme had been launched. They seem to have believed that the development of agricultural productivity and small-scale local processing, focusing on vegetable species that were locally well established with the various categories of producer and were mainly processed by women, would automatically work to the benefit of farmers with little land or land that is hard to farm, and that of disadvantaged women. The experience of PDRT, however, showed that these groups are not automatically reached, and that without a real effort to take their particular production conditions into account, without a watertight and operational targeting strategy and without innovative actions for the optimization of their specific potential, they miss out on most of the possible benefits of the programme. At a time when the international situation and calls from IFAD’s member countries are leading the Fund to refocus on agricultural development, the very important question arises of how to ensure that agricultural development is inclusive? Neglecting the poorest farming households seems unacceptable in the current context of Benin, where inequitable growth redistribution is considered one of the main structural causes of encroaching poverty and the rural exodus. It would also be incompatible with IFAD’s mandate and targeting policy. The table below summaries the ratings assigned by the Office of Evaluation for the various evaluation criteria:

Summary of ratings assigned to PDRT and its partners

ª Ratings are assigned on a scale of 1 to 6 (6 = very satisfactory; 5 = satisfactory; 4 = moderately satisfactory; 3 = moderately unsatisfactory; 2 = unsatisfactory; 1 = very unsatisfactory).

Recommendations

The evaluation led to three recommendations:

• IFAD, in collaboration with partner Governments, should carry out studies on: i) root and tuber development projects cofinanced by IFAD in Western and Central Africa, focusing particularly on the impact that recent technological, socio-economic and institutional developments in the root and tuber subsector have had on the standard of living of the poorest working rural inhabitants (IFAD’s target group) and on the environment; and ii) the targeting strategies used in projects cofinanced by IFAD, with a view to analysing the performance of the various strategies in question.
• IFAD and the Government should innovate more extensively with regard to the approaches and technologies designed in favour of the poorest root and tuber producers and processors in order to develop their potential to contribute to agricultural and rural development and play a direct role in improving their standard of living. Such approaches should be part of the implementation strategy for Benin’s national policy on root and tuber promotion and entail such elements as: (i) an effective approach to targeting the poorest root and tuber producers and processors; (ii) concrete measures to ensure secure access to land for the targeted producers; (iii) private services accessible to the poorest producers and processors, such as input supplies and credit; (iv) facilitation of the poorest people’s access to markets; and (v) support to help both male and female rural workers in the subsector to organize in order to protect their interests with a view to obtaining better working conditions.
• In the framework of IFAD-financed projects, the Government should ensure the sustainability of results and the scaling up of the innovations promoted by PDRT. This would entail particularly such lines of action as: (i) boosting and rationalization of the plant material production chain for improved varieties and extension of this approach to other roots and tubers; (ii) ongoing popularization of sustainable production technologies for roots and tubers; (iii) improvement in quality management and organization of the marketing of bread-making flour; (iv) ongoing development of quality standards for root and tuber products and establishment of a quality control system and a product traceability and certification system; (v) support to producers’ and processors’ groups, on the basis of their members’ objectives, in developing towards service cooperatives or lobbying associations and eventually, if the need is felt within these grass-roots organizations, assistance in forming federations; and (vi) replication of the results-based payment system for public and private service providers in the context of other IFAD-financed projects.