IFAD's assistance to Mali. Since 1982, IFAD has approved ten loans for a sum of almost US$126 million, making a total of US$280 million when combined with the contributions of the Government and donors such as the West African Development Bank (WADB) and the Belgian Survival Fund (BSF).  Out of nine projects, seven have been completed.  In particular, the PDR-MS (Income Diversification Project in the Mali-Sud non-cotton area) was closed in 2005 and the PDZL II (Zone Lacustre Development Project – Phase II) in June 2006.  The Sahelian Areas Development Fund Programme (FODESA) and the Northern Mali Investment and Rural Development Programme (PIDRN) are the only active projects.  A programme for the Kidal region (the Kidal Integrated Rural Development Programme – PIDRK) was approved recently. Apart from loan programmes, Mali has benefited from regional technical assistance grants, for a total of US$3 million, the most recent of which involves partnerships with research institutes such as ICRAF, IITA, IPGRI or NGOs. 

Evaluation objectives and methodology.  The two main objectives of the country programme evaluation (CPE) were to: (a) assess the performance and impact of IFAD operations in Mali; and (b) generate a series of findings and recommendations that would serve as building blocks for the preparation of the next IFAD Country Strategic Opportunities Programme (COSOP) for Mali, a task which will be undertaken by IFAD's Western and Central Africa Division following the completion of the evaluation.  The overall approach to IFAD's strategy and operations in Mali during the evaluation period was articulated in the Fund's COSOP of 1997.  According to IFAD's evaluation methodology, a CPE addresses three main questions: a) the quality of the strategy; b) the effective implementation of the strategy and performance of operations; and c) the results and impact of IFAD's strategy and operations for the beneficiaries and the country.  The CPE covered the period 1997 to 2006, even though some IFAD-funded operations before 1997 were also considered in the evaluation for purposes of comparison.

Economy and poverty situation.  Mali is a landlocked Sahelian country, extremely dependent on climatic fluctuations, with an area of more than 1.2 million km2, about 60 per cent of this in arid zones or desert. With a per capita GDP of US$358 (2004), it is a very poor country, with 11.4 million inhabitants, 70 per cent in rural zones. Mali is ranked 174th of 177 countries according to the UNDP human development index.  The two main notions of poverty adopted in the debate around poverty reduction in Mali are mass and monetary poverty. "Mass poverty" refers to the degree of access to basic infrastructures, while "monetary poverty" is estimated on the basis of the income needed to meet basic needs. In 2001, mass povertyaffected nearly two-thirds of Mali's population (64 per cent), 76 per cent in rural areas and only 30 per cent in urban areas. On the other hand, the monetary poverty has a prevalence of 81% and 33% in rural and urban areas, respectively. Monetary poverty is greater in the Koulikoro, Sikasso (which is located in the southern cotton belt) and Mopti regions, while mass poverty is more prevalent in northern Mali.

Poverty reduction and the weight of aid. The Government of Mali adopted a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper for 2002-06. The goal was to reduce the incidence of monetary poverty from 64 to 48 per cent by 2006. However, the reduction was only 0.7 per cent between 1994 and 2001, and the incidence of poverty was 59 per cent in 2005, despite growth in GDP. This is far from the goals set.  Overall, external aid amounts to US$560 million, or 13% of GDP.  In recent years, IFAD's annual expenditure in Mali has been about 1 per cent of total external financing devoted to poverty and about 3.5% of external financing to the development of basic infrastructure and productive sectors (European Commission 2006).  IFAD cannot influence national policies through the size of its investments, but rather through the quality of its iterventions. This means that special attention must be devoted to operation performance and innovation promoting capacity.

The strategy of IFAD

The Country Strategic Opportunities Paper (COSOP) for Mali (1997) stated the aim of assistance to the Government of Mali as being to improve the rural poor's standard of living through four main objectives: a) ensuring household food security; b) creating a sustainable village- or group-based participatory development process; c) increasing household incomes; and d) ensuring sustainable natural resource management. The COSOP defined two intervention zones: the Sahelian zone, located between the 14th and 16th latitudes north and the sub-Saharan belt.  Unlike the classic project approach, which is seen as cumbersome, with little mobilizing power, the COSOP proposed the demand-driven approach, with "open" projects, in which the beneficiaries would be involved in preparing and implementing interventions.

Progress but also limitations.  The COSOP offers a satisfactory degree of understanding of the issues involved in poverty reduction.  Weaknesses are concentrated around the practical issues of operationalization, identification of partners, and policy dialogue.  With "light", "open" and "catalytic" projects, the demand-driven approach is a priori attractive and fairly innovative, but questions remain as to its implementation.  The COSOP tends to lose focus of the idea of building a real "programme", with projects linked to a central issue, and deals primarily with defining an implementation philosophy rather than the precise goals and results to be reached.  The document discusses neither the human nor organizational resources (the staff required at IFAD and in Mali, and piloting of operations) needed to implement the strategy.  Monitoring and impact evaluation are two of the major oversights of the COSOP, making it very difficult to pilot a results-based policy or programme. 

The COSOP anticipated that revisions of its text may be needed in 2000-02, especially with a view to better integration into the dynamics of decentralization, but revisions were not undertaken.  Similarly, the country's economic situation, the characteristics of poverty, and public policies or views of them have changed.  Given these important policy changes, an earlier reflection of such issues in the COSOP would have been appropriate. 

Performance, Impact and Results

The objectives of the operations were generally in line with public policies and strategies and IFAD's orientations, although weaknesses have been identified in the approaches adopted to achieve these objectives. Approaches are insufficiently "economic", in that they do not take sufficient account of the issues of cost-effectiveness and marketing.¹  Monitoring, and especially evaluation systems are still too weak to be useful as real piloting tools, although it is anticipated that the new projects (PIDRN and PIDRK) will be equipped with the necessary tools, using the Results and Impact Management System framework of IFAD.  Credit components suffer from inappropriate approaches: the formulation has often focused on the creation of new structures without taking sufficient account of existing institutions and networks and the experience of other actors.  Although notable improvements can be seen in the design of new projects (PIDRN and PIDRK), it has taken time to position IFAD's operations firmly within the national decentralization process and related financing mechanisms.

Interventions have, in general, been effective in increasing irrigated areas and establishing basic infrastructures in isolated areas, but less effective in making production profitable, in marketing and supporting grassroots organizations. Efficiency has been satisfactory with regard to hydro-agricultural components, but poor in rural finance components. In addition, project management costs have far exceeded forecasts.

The performance and impact of COSOP-generation projects (PDR-MS, PDZL II and FODESA) have, in general, improved in comparison with the reference situation (PSARK and PFDVS II).  Globally, impact on food security (the COSOP's first objective) has generally been fairly satisfactory, as have that in the improvement of health and access to drinking water. However, impact is still limited in two other COSOP domains: the creation of a sustainable process of participatory village development (second objective) and improved household incomes (third objective).  For sustainable natural resource management (fourth objective), actions have been undertaken under PDR-MS and PDZL II, although no assessment is available of their final effects.  Impact has been significant when interventions have been integrated and concentrated in geographical terms, as in the PDZL II, which had a strong territorial concentration of interventions and synergy among components (for example, irrigation, health centres and drinking water in the same communities)² . On the other hand, the demand-driven approach (as in the case of FODESA) presents the risk of scattering activities over a fairly wide area with a poor integration of components, limiting the final impact.

Sustainability is still fragile, due to a number of factors: the weakness of farmers' organizations; an often unclear definition of responsibilities for the upkeep of infrastructures; and the fact that little study has been devoted to the cost-effectiveness of productive microprojects (warehouses, shops, soap-making and dyeing units, local irrigation schemes, etc.). The lack of specialists in project management units (PMUs) has reduced the quality of interventions. With regard to rural finance, the networks established are far from being sustainable, and various elements indicate persistent difficulties, such as a financial sustainability rate of 50 to 60 per cent. In general, real sustainability possibilities are often overestimated when the projects are being formulated, and the search for sustainability starts only at the end of the project, leaving little time to ensure the transition.

In general, the capacity to promote innovation has been limited.  The programme has contributed to innovation in two areas: technical assistance grants and the demand-driven approach. Technical assistance grants have introduced innovative approaches in terms of participatory research and the boosting of farmers' capacity to understand, analyse and manage their plant genetic resources. However, such activities tended to remain localized without a structured process to capitalize on and share and disseminate experiences, and thus without replication and up-scaling.  In particular, there is little synergy between grant and project activities (with some exceptions in the case of PDR-MS).  The second innovation concerns the demand-driven approach.  Although this approach may seem attractive, it does have limitations in terms of the scattered nature of interventions and poor income generation.  This limitation has been recognized by the direct supervision missions of IFAD, and the Fund is now trying to modify the project's strategy. 

Regarding the performance of IFAD, the quality of project formulation is generally fairly good, even with some of the problems of relevance, which have been pointed out.  Mid-term reviews are of good quality, but are often carried out too late to define any changes in design or methods in time to make a difference.  In the case of FODESA, direct supervision and implementation support have proved to be a more effective instrument for IFAD in Mali, as compared to supervision by co-operating institutions.  That is, direct supervision has contributed to better familiarisation of IFAD with issues at the field level.  Therefore, it represents a promising option, particularly when the cooperating institution cannot provide expertise in key project areas.  However, direct supervision and implementation support has required a greater level of effort by the CPM, for whom direct supervision and implementation support was an added responsibility without a concurrent reduction in other tasks. In sum, notwithstanding its clear benefits, the CPM's workload level, skill requirements and financial aspects of direct supervision and implementation support activities need to be carefully considered in the future.

PMUs and management procedures.  The new generation of projects has been marked by improved implementation performance.  However, the rates of implementation were still low during the first years, leading to the need for project extensions and hence, to increasing management costs. These delays reflect problems with design, but also with the piloting of interventions. The other source of poor functioning arises from what can be called the side effects of the "Do-Do" approach, meaning that PMUs subcontract most of the implementation functions to operators from the private sector, NGOs or parastatals.  The "Do-Do" approach has its good points, but also its limitations.  In the Malian context, as in others, one cannot confine oneself to "Do-Do" in a formal framework of a purely "contractual" type. There should also be "Do with" in supporting, supervising and guiding the great majority of operators, which is not being done, or not enough.

Globally, the evaluation has noted an improvement between past and more recent interventions, as well as an increased level of efforts in project execution made by project agencies, even in difficult and low potential areas.  However, there is still considerable room for performance enhancement. 

Recommendations

Revision of strategic planning.  The preparation of a new COSOP for Mali is planned and the new COSOP should particularly take into account changes in the country's socio-economic context, new development strategies and IFAD's new action plan and particularly the new guidelines for COSOP preparation.

Periodic adjustment and resources.  Once the major thrusts have been established, an annual adjustment document should be planned.  Since every activity is conditioned by the availability of resources, the new COSOP should also discuss the resources required to implement the strategy.

Geographic and sectoral concentration and adoption of more "economic" approaches. Realistically, IFAD projects need to refocus on smaller areas, where impacts will be visible. The same comment applies to intervention sub-sectors: it is necessary to concentrate on fewer sub-sectors where support from specialists can be counted on, at both IFAD and project levels.  The projects should support joint actions at the upstream and downstream market levels, linking technical and economic advice more effectively, and integrating better with local and regional development and food security plans and the plans of local communities.

Boosting of implementation support and local-level management capacities.  It is essential to build up the strategic management capacities of projects at the PMU level, especially in order to avoid the side effects of the "Do-Do" approach. The accent should be placed on three linked objectives:  (i) boosting of IFAD's implementation support capacities through more frequent review and support missions and more active participation in solving implementation problems;  (ii) boosting of PMUs' technical skills, depending on the actions planned, so that they can steer interventions, and guide and "digest" missions of experts, not just supervise activities and contracts; and iii) major boosting of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms for a results-based approach.

Boosting of innovation promoting capacity. IFAD needs a systematic approach to: i) knowledge management, so that it can take on board promising experiences; ii) partnerships, so that it can forge strategic alliances with innovation creators (technical cooperation agencies, NGOs, research institutions) and funding and executing agencies that will ensure the dissemination and replication of such innovation (the Government, other donors); and iii) the capacity to intervene in policy dialogue so that it can promote innovations and remove institutional and legal obstacles to their implementation.

In terms of project design and execution, a systematic collaboration framework between grants and projects must be set up, based on: systematic analysis of needs; the search for available alternatives (inside and outside IFAD operations); implementation of small-scale pilot schemes; capitalization on results; and popularization of advances, including through the media, in order to facilitate scaling up.³

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1/ According to IFAD's Western and Central Africa Division and the Ministry of Agriculture of Mali, it might be too ambitious to "adopt economic approaches" in areas where food insecurity is prevalent.  The point made by the present evaluation is simply that economic viability and upstream and downstream market issues should be carefully studied from the beginning, as they represent key ingredients to improve food security and an essential prerequisite for sustainability.  As production cannot be increased without costs, the conditions to be able to repay such costs need to be considered.

2/ Agro-ecological differences between project areas account for part of the variations in results.  For example, PDZL II is implemented in an area with abundant water resources, which is not the case of PDR-MS and FODESA. However, the limited performances of PDR-MS and FODESA are mainly due to problems with certain approaches adopted by the two projects.

3/ In this regard, lessons could be taken from the Agreement at Completion Point from the Evaluation of IFAD's Capacity as a Promoter of Replicable Innovation, carried out by the Office of Evaluation in 2002.