Evaluation of Project Performance and Impact
Targeting and Cross-Cutting Issues
Targeting. The design of the first
project while defining four social strata in the province
– vulnerable households, ‘poor’ households, ‘average’ households
and wealthy households – has not elaborated a poverty reduction
strategy but has included a sub-component to address the needs
of the vulnerable households: ‘Agricultural Production Reactivation
Packages for Vulnerable Households’. This is an important
initiative as it deals with some of the poorest households
in the province, many of which have recently been resettled
with few possessions and little money and others that are
incomplete households that have great difficulty meeting the
food requirements of the families. Thus, while the mission
fully supports the initiative to assist those households defined
as ‘vulnerable’ – about 20 000 or 21% of total households
in the province – it is equally important to define a practical
strategy that addresses the rest of the poor families in the
province and ensures that the interventions designed take
their needs into account. The resultant strategy should incorporate
the ‘vulnerables’ as part of the spectrum of poor households
and allow them to participate in a range of project activities.
Cross-cutting Themes. Two main cross-cutting
themes have been reviewed during the evaluation: gender and
environment. The project design’s response to the question
of gender was to include firstly, a women-in-development
subcomponent as part of Capacity Building and secondly, a
Women Investment Fund window for the Group Revolving Funds
sub-component. While these initiatives have helped to provide
a focus on women’s needs and have in fact been successful
in transferring some project resources to women, they have
tended to be free-standing activities and have allowed the
project to ignore gender dimensions and support needed by
women in the rest of the project’s activities. This is a question
of the lack of awareness of what the project should be doing
in these other activities rather than a lack of willingness
to deal with the issue. A well-designed gender strategy would
be an important tool to allow the PCU to develop a more comprehensive
and effective gender programme for the project.
The second theme, environment, received
considerable attention in the appraisal reports of both the
first and twin projects and three environmental assessment
studies of the entire province were carried out prior to implementation
of the project. Some 43 recommendations came out of the document
resulting from these studies (‘Pro-active Environment Assessment
of Investment Options’) with responses to each of these provided
in the appraisal reports. In spite of this attention during
project design, no provision was made to provide a focus on
environmental aspects in the first phase. No budget was provided
to carry out a follow-up environmental assessment at the end
of this phase to determine if the project had in fact been
able to operate within the environmental guidelines proposed
in the appraisal reports. Such a study is necessary.
Project Supervision and Loan Administration
UNOPS has been supervising the project twice
a year due to the existence of 2 IFAD loans and reports from
the PCU and other project partners (reported to the evaluation
mission) indicate that the missions were well received and
deemed useful in helping to guide project implementation and
resolve issues. It should be noted, however, that more pressure
should have been put on the PCU to develop a functioning M&E
system including assisting the PCU to carry out a baseline
survey; this should have been one of the early project actions.
Similarly, the difficulties with the contract managing process
have been an ongoing problem and while IFAD/UNOPS has recently
provided some support through provision of training of staff
in financial management and administration procedures it has
not been sufficient and a major strengthening and reworking
of the contracting/project management system is needed. Regarding
the process of reviewing requests for proposals, evaluations
made and proposed contracts, it is reported that delays in
receiving ‘no objections’ from the National Tender Board have
been delaying project implementation.
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