The Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD (IOE) has carried out a project performance evaluation of the National Rural Entrepreneurship Project (PNPER) in the Togolese Republic, the first evaluation done by IOE in the country.

The PNPER was implemented between 2014 and 2021. It was intended to help address the lack of good-quality non-financial and financial services for entrepreneurs, cooperatives and rural microenterprises, in order to strengthen the country’s strong culture of entrepreneurship.

The evaluation found that the project successfully trained and assisted several thousand rural entrepreneurs in developing their business plans. However, there was no significant impact on this group. The project’s design was overly complex and unrealistic for the main stakeholders’ institutional capacities, and there were also shortcomings in the targeting strategy. Nevertheless, the project helped boost incomes and create jobs for a small number of rural microenterprises and small businesses.

The evaluation recommends, among other things, to allocate sufficient time and resources to target rural entrepreneurs effectively. In addition, the model for promoting access to financial and non-financial services for microenterprises and small businesses should be strengthened.