What can we do to improve the quality of development projects? Comments
This is a very interesting and tough question, at least for smallholder agriculture projects. To get a full appreciation of the problem it is necessary to take a detailed look at how projects are formulated, the time & costs of formulating a development project, the degree the project developers are isolated from the beneficiaries, the representation the beneficiaries have during project development, the extend the donor is expecting the implementing team to appease their concept of what needs to be done and the cost of not appeasing the donor in terms of contract extensions and future projects.
Most agriculture development projects take a least 2 years from conception to signed contract & implementation with a cost at least one million US dollars. This is before there is an opportunity to objectively meet and interview beneficiaries and become aware of what their real needs and interest are. With that much time and money invested no one want to hear the project is mis-conceived and the beneficiaries are not interested and avoiding active participation. During this time the basic conceptualization is done by donors and often based on academic idealism, heavily promoted of social desirability rather than solid business accounting etc. This is done with the cooperation of host governments, who claim to represent the beneficiaries, but often don’t have the financial resources to be close contract with the beneficiaries and may have some personal vested interest in the project. During this period any contact with the beneficiaries are usually limited to very quick highly orchestrated appraisal visits and relying on pre-arranged and well briefed beneficiaries for interviewing. The beneficiaries are actually isolated from the donors claiming to arrange assistance for them by a 4-level development hierarchy. The end result is often very rigidly contracts with little flexibility for modification, leaving the implementors with little choice but to leverage the beneficiaries to comply with the donors conceptualization of what they need, or simply ignore project and proceed as best they can, which most opt for. The implementing team is also virtually hostage to appeasement reporting to show a successful project, regardless of the actual acceptance by the beneficiaries. Fail to do so will be interpreted as failure of implementing team resulting in limited project extension or future projects. After all the project design was perfect.
The best example of this is the nearly 40 years and billions invested in producer organization or cooperatives. However, an objective evaluation would show well over 90% failures collapsing immediately after external funding and facilitation end, with less than 15% of potential beneficiaries participating, marketing little more than the intuitional in-kind loan repayment, representing only 5% of the community’s market volume. Also, if the beneficiaries really relied on the project business model the overhead costs would exceed the bulking volume benefits which would than force the farmers deeper into poverty, despite the massive rhetoric of poverty alleviation.
Please review the following webpages from the smallholderagriculture.agsci.colostate.edu website:
RE: What can we do to improve the quality of development projects?
What can we do to improve the quality of development projects? Comments
This is a very interesting and tough question, at least for smallholder agriculture projects. To get a full appreciation of the problem it is necessary to take a detailed look at how projects are formulated, the time & costs of formulating a development project, the degree the project developers are isolated from the beneficiaries, the representation the beneficiaries have during project development, the extend the donor is expecting the implementing team to appease their concept of what needs to be done and the cost of not appeasing the donor in terms of contract extensions and future projects.
Most agriculture development projects take a least 2 years from conception to signed contract & implementation with a cost at least one million US dollars. This is before there is an opportunity to objectively meet and interview beneficiaries and become aware of what their real needs and interest are. With that much time and money invested no one want to hear the project is mis-conceived and the beneficiaries are not interested and avoiding active participation. During this time the basic conceptualization is done by donors and often based on academic idealism, heavily promoted of social desirability rather than solid business accounting etc. This is done with the cooperation of host governments, who claim to represent the beneficiaries, but often don’t have the financial resources to be close contract with the beneficiaries and may have some personal vested interest in the project. During this period any contact with the beneficiaries are usually limited to very quick highly orchestrated appraisal visits and relying on pre-arranged and well briefed beneficiaries for interviewing. The beneficiaries are actually isolated from the donors claiming to arrange assistance for them by a 4-level development hierarchy. The end result is often very rigidly contracts with little flexibility for modification, leaving the implementors with little choice but to leverage the beneficiaries to comply with the donors conceptualization of what they need, or simply ignore project and proceed as best they can, which most opt for. The implementing team is also virtually hostage to appeasement reporting to show a successful project, regardless of the actual acceptance by the beneficiaries. Fail to do so will be interpreted as failure of implementing team resulting in limited project extension or future projects. After all the project design was perfect.
The best example of this is the nearly 40 years and billions invested in producer organization or cooperatives. However, an objective evaluation would show well over 90% failures collapsing immediately after external funding and facilitation end, with less than 15% of potential beneficiaries participating, marketing little more than the intuitional in-kind loan repayment, representing only 5% of the community’s market volume. Also, if the beneficiaries really relied on the project business model the overhead costs would exceed the bulking volume benefits which would than force the farmers deeper into poverty, despite the massive rhetoric of poverty alleviation.
Please review the following webpages from the smallholderagriculture.agsci.colostate.edu website:
https://smallholderagriculture.agsci.colostate.edu/project-development-process-who-represents-the-smallholders/
https://smallholderagriculture.agsci.colostate.edu/development-hierarchy-four-layers-of-isolation/
https://smallholderagriculture.agsci.colostate.edu/appeasement-reporting-in-development-projects-satisfying-donors-at-the-expense-of-beneficiaries/