Introduction

At the request of IFAD's Operations Department, the Office of Evaluation conducted an evaluation of the country programme for the Republic of Senegal between October 2002 and July 2003. The objective was to examine the set of projects and other actions to implement IFAD's strategy in the country with an eye to measuring the degree of coherence and synergy among them and assessing their effectiveness in supporting the major thrusts of the country's agricultural policy and IFAD's priorities. It also sought to draw lessons – by means of open discussions with all partners – from the experience gained. The outcomes of this process are presented in the form of strategic and operational recommendations that will serve as input in the preparation of the new IFAD strategy paper for Senegal (i.e. the country strategic opportunities paper - COSOP).

The programme evaluation was carried out in three stages, based on an approach paper prepared in October 2002:

Review of field research and documentation, project by project (from October to December 2002).
Compilation and processing of data collected, an additional field mission and meet with local and national officers; preparation of a consolidated report presenting strategic recommendations for the programme (from March to May 2003). Comments were received from the Core Learning Partnership between June and July 2003.
Organization of a feedback and validation workshop on 15 and 16 July 2003 in Saly (M'bour), attended by 60 participants, including all the members of the Core Learning Partnership. The workshop's conclusions are annexed to the evaluation report.

The present agreement at completion point, which is the final step of the evaluation process, was approved in December 2003 on the basis of the outcomes of the Saly feedback and validation workshop.

The members of the core evaluation partnership that reached consensus on this document were:

• the Minister of Agriculture, or his/her representative at the July 2003 validation workshop.
• the Minister of Environmental Affairs, or his/her representative at the validation workshop.
• the Director for Economic and Financial Cooperation of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance, or his/her representative at the validation workshop.
• the Director for Debt and Investment of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance, or his/her representative at the validation workshop.
• the managers of IFAD-financed projects under way in Senegal;
• the Director for Rural Development of the West African Development Bank (BOAD).
• the Director of IFAD's Western and Central Africa Division; and
• the IFAD Programme Officer for Senegal.

Pursuant to IFAD's evaluation policy and procedures, the Office of Evaluation holds sole responsibility for the content of the evaluation report, which is presented independently to the Fund's Executive Board. The agreement at completion point, on the other hand, expresses the consensus reached on a number of strategic recommendations by the parties involved in the evaluation process; the agreement creates a responsibility for the members of the core learning partnership to act on the approved recommendations in accordance with modalities and a schedule they deem appropriate. 

Main findings of the evaluation

Cooperation between IFAD and Senegal enjoyed an especially fruitful period in the 1990s. Whereas there had been only one project during the 1980s, four projects were launched around 1990 and six projects are currently under way (three of which are second phases). The total financial commitment for the 11 projects approved as of this writing stands at USD 235 million (around 150 billion CFA francs), of which USD 114 million in IFAD loans. For the five closed projects, the average duration of implementation was nine years and the final disbursement rate of IFAD loans was 77%. The average disbursement rate of the five projects under way at the time of the evaluation was 21%, and the average duration of implementation was three years. The two cooperating institutions of IFAD in Senegal are BOAD and the World Bank.

Given the scope of its geographic coverage and current financial commitment, the IFAD programme in Senegal is a development partnership of national importance. It is also one of IFAD's largest investment portfolios in Western and Central Africa.

The portfolio is guided by a COSOP that dates from 1998 and defines four priority thrusts for intervention, although it lacks performance indicators and other specific targets stated in terms of figures and dates. Approval of the COSOP was promptly followed by a portfolio review mission (1999), which led to a partial but important strategic change vis-à-vis the 1998 paper. IFAD's partners in Senegal, at both the project and the central government level, are relatively unfamiliar with the COSOP and the portfolio review report. 

The first two priority thrusts under the 1998 COSOP are to strengthen the capacity of the rural poor and to organize them with a view to consolidating their position in the economy and political life. In this regard, the COSOP for Senegal prefigured both IFAD's current strategic framework (2002) and the regional strategy paper (2001). It reflects the evolution of the Government's rural and agricultural development policy and its decentralization policy that IFAD supports by way of its participation in the National Rural Infrastructure Programme (PNIR). These priority thrusts are embodied in development objectives and operational components in most of the projects under way. However, regarding the activities to build the capacity of local organizations, there has been some confusion between the functions that have to do with community development and local government and the functions that are of a professional agricultural nature and have to do with individual economic interests.

Effectiveness: real results but impact is poorly documented and monitored

Locally, a socio-economic impact is evident in places where major productive investments were concentrated (walo in Matam, in northern Bambey). In spheres where activities were more scattered (agroforestry, income-generating activities, microenterprise), the impact is less perceptible despite the importance of outcomes (e.g. enclosures established on 10 000 ha around 600 villages in the Groundnut Basin, 570 million CFA francs in credit granted under the first phase of the POGV-I, 4 000 jobs created/consolidated by the PROMER).

In all cases, a strong point of the projects has been their adoption of the village as the focal point and their direct contact with the circumstances and experience of rural residents in underprivileged regions. The participatory approach truly involves the populations (although not necessarily the poorest households and individuals, despite village targeting). The 1990s were marked by increasing attention being given to the specific interests of rural women.

The significant training efforts, especially under the POGV and the Agricultural Development Project in Matam (PRODAM) – which, combined, have provided literacy training to over 25 000 persons – suggest a notable improvement of the human resources base. Numerous grass-roots organizations have been strengthened or created, some of which have begun to join together in federations. The approaches adopted, however, have varied considerably, ranging from the "village development committee model" replicated in 520 villages of the Groundnut Basin (village-based coordination structures or professional agricultural organizations) to approaches such as PRODAM's, which seek to strengthen existing organizations so they may take on mainly economic functions.     

Almost all the projects currently under way have strong infrastructure components, but financing conditions and modalities differ from one project to the next and are not always consistent with the PNIR.  

Agricultural advisory services, research and development, and support for innovation have overall been mediocre, with few noteworthy results having been posted in this area. Communication with the PSAOP is still insufficient.

In most cases, the sustainability of access to suitable financial services is not ensured (inadequate repayment levels, existence of relationships that are dependent on the presence of the projects).

Despite the broad scope of the programme, impact was limited to project/programme villages with little spill-over effect on local development and no multiplier effect at the national level.

With the exception of the Walo in Matam, the achievements rarely had a broad impact or a sufficient institutional base to set into motion a sustainable dynamic of local development. If all the expected benefits of the four projects currently evaluable were to materialize (which is not the case), a total of 20 000 households would be affected, i.e. only 4% of Senegal's rural population. These same households are grappling with the negative counter-effects of factors that lie outside the projects' scope of influence (worsening of terms of trade in the rice sub-sector, the groundnut crisis, competition from imported onions, etc.). The second-generation projects (excluding the PNIR) will involve 770 villages, but the majority of them are the same as those covered under the previous projects.

If this IFAD programme aims to contribute decisively to reducing rural poverty (by one half over the coming 12 years, according to the Millennium Development Goals), it needs to move beyond its direct impact in programme villages and generate multiplier and "catalytic" effects: it should remain anchored in the villages but extend its action to a broader sphere. The mixture of local interventions, alliances with national programmes, and participation in reflection and dialogue on policy holds potential to create much greater impact, provided it is part of a coherent and shared programme. 

Recommendations agreed upon by all partners

Enhance the performance of the project as an instrument of development and enhance the effectiveness of action vis-à-vis the rural population

Institutional setting and disengagement strategy. The respective roles of project management units (PMUs), operators (OPP), economic actors and local organizations need to be revisited and better defined in order to adopt without further delay an approach that includes planned disengagement from the projects. Transferring the function of the PMUs to contracted operators, the "faire faire" approach is a step in this direction. But the time has come to provide greater support for initiatives and for activities directed driven by sustainable local actors (rural communities, farmer organizations, local undertakings).

PMUs need to have an explicit exit strategy and operators should not view their role as permanent, inasmuch as the purpose of the interventions is to create operational autonomy for farmer organizations and local actors.

Strengthening the PMUs' strategic guidance tools is crucial to ensuring flexibility and autonomy in management

The Monitoring and evaluation (M&E), especially of effects and impacts, should occupy a central position and should be part of a participatory framework (including tools for self-evaluation by farmer organizations). The strategic project guidance should be geared towards and driven by impact monitoring.

A surveillance function is necessary, in order to foresee and prepare for major institutional, economic and social changes (e.g. the groundnut production chain).

A common programme of M&E support, training and advice for all projects under the programme, based on IFAD's M&E guidelines, will be carried out during 2004.

A clarification of the roles and functions of the various types of rural organizations is essential in the so called "village development" projects". The roles of the rural community authorities (village development committees and rural councils) and the professional groups  (economic interest groups, cooperatives, federations of farmer organizations) complement each other but must be clearly defined. Failing to distinguish among these categories poses potential risks both to the organizations and their members.

In all cases the projects should acknowledge and promote the autonomy of farmer organizations and the sustainability of their network of relationships. They should work to ensure that farmer organizations are not simply outgrowths of the projects; foster horizontal exchanges and local federative processes along functional lines; and encourage independent and direct relations with economic actors and local services.

The Ministry of Agriculture should organize a workshop bringing together all actors in the field with a view to gaining a better understanding of the place and role of each actor.

The strengthening of the relationships between farmer organizations and services that provide advice and support for agricultural innovation is necessary to make them more effective and more operational. In this area, procedures used by the local projects should be harmonised with those defined by the national programmes such as the PSAOP. In particular a single procedure should be set up along the lines of the CLCOPs as part of the national policy.

Farmer organizations should create conditions for their autonomy in terms of resources.

Strengthen local development approaches

"Local development approach" refers to the pursuit, within a given geographic area, of: complementarity and synergy across sectors (agropastoral production, microenterprise, financial and marketing services, infrastructure), of linkages among the various levels of organization present in the area (villages, rural communities, regions; economic interest groups and federations of farmer organizations), and finally of collaboration among development operators. Working locally makes it possible to tap existing networks of solidarity built around the shared knowledge and shared problems of the actors. The rural community is the ideal starting point for this approach. At the operational level, there is agreement on the following recommendations.

Project interventions should be recentred on contiguous geographic areas to avoid the dispersion that comes with village-based targeting and to create synergy and economies of scale at the territorial level. If the village or grass-roots group is to remain the principal venue of action, the rural community must be fully recognized as the area for intervention and planning of public service actions (especially for infrastructure development). Within a rural community, no village should be excluded a priori from access to project services.

Within their area of intervention (e.g. rural community, department), IFAD projects should intensify cooperation and coordination with other local development actors and projects. Projects need to look beyond their own internal logic and think of themselves more as members of a community of partners, working for the development of the same population and working in the same space. The search for local complementarity and collaboration should become systematic, beginning with the other projects financed by IFAD and the World Bank (PROMER, PSAOP, PNIR); spatial overlapping will also be cultivated with these projects. The effort should include as well the various public and private operators and NGOs.

Projects should encourage and facilitate autonomous interaction and collaboration between existing farmer organizations and their sustainable local partners, both public and private. PMUs and OPPs should avoid becoming a surrogate for local service providers or setting up farmer organizations or cooperation networks where they already exist.

Projects should play a more active role in supporting initiatives to bring producers and producer organizations into the market in the project area, in conjunction and synergy with the national programme to support the marketing of agricultural products currently in preparation.

At the local level, the projects should systematically promote the integration of small enterprises into structured sub-sectors upstream and downstream of agricultural activities, with the dual objective of facilitating market access and enhancing local added value. PROMER and the local projects should reinforce their collaboration in this sphere.

The regulatory framework and project procurement procedures should be adjusted with an eye to promoting local preference in tenders, while respecting the need for competitive products from a price and quality standpoint.

Similarly, local microfinance institutions (known by their French acronym SFDs) should be encouraged to form networks (refinanced by Caisse nationale de crédit agricole du Sénégal and Crédit mutuel du Sénégal). SFDs need urgently to become more professionalized to make them attractive and trustworthy to banks. Banks and networks need to establish closer ties for better articulation of their respective roles. Such support to institutional development can be provided immediately by the projects through appropriate protocols with SFDs. The timeliness of a national programme to develop rural financial services with support from IFAD should be examined within the COSOP framework.

With regard to infrastructure financing, the projects have encountered difficulties mobilizing beneficiary participation in building community infrastructure. In addition, the rate of village contribution varies broadly from one project to the next at the national level, even though the projects focus on the same regions. Farmer participation rates need to be adapted to beneficiaries' capacity and harmonized across national programmes and projects.

Create a coherent, effective and shared IFAD programme in Senegal

IFAD's programme in Senegal should be structured around a few key operating principles that apply to all projects:

Planned disengagement. The project structure is temporary. One of the priorities should thus be to work towards establishing autonomous, sustainable relationships between farmer organizations and their permanent development partners.
The concept of local development. Projects should explore spaces for complementarity and synergy with other stakeholders – public services, private operators, NGOs – working in the same geographic areas.
Local and global linkages. All the projects have a priority level of intervention. At the same time, the problems addressed often entail actions to be taken at several levels: from local initiatives up to nationwide measures. By drawing on well-formed partnerships, the strategies of projects and of farmer organizations should overlap in the respective spheres.

Working within such a common frame of reference, the projects can and should capitalize on their areas of complementarity, develop a common approach and equip themselves with the organizational means to enhance their interaction.

The graphs presented at the end of the evaluation report propose an initial conceptual framework that could guide a common reflection on a strategic approach (‘three spheres of intervention, three areas of action'). They allow visualisation of the priority areas to be retained in the strategy and of the links between the different levels of action and different actors and institutions.

With an eye to setting up a coherent, effective programme of cooperation, the following recommendations are made:

organize, while the new COSOP is being prepared, a workshop for all the IFAD projects, their partners and their line agencies, to formulate a strategic framework to serve as a platform for the programme and to define modalities for work in common;
hold regular meetings with partners on topics of common interest and create a dynamic of partnership; and
set up a mechanism to ensure supervision and tap achievements and lessons learned, promote cross-project relationships, and foster dialogue among national partners, IFAD and other donors/lenders.

On this last point, the recommendation made by the evaluation extends beyond the one that was the object of consensus at the July 2003 validation workshop. The evaluation recommends, in effect, the implementation of a small monitoring and coordination unit for the IFAD programme in Senegal, to be located under the Ministry of Agriculture. The unit would have four functions:

Facilitate interaction among all projects in the programme and organize regular meetings on topics of common interest, bringing together the officers in charge of IFAD-financed projects, officers responsible for other national programmes that are directly complementary, and representatives of line agencies, of IFAD and of its cooperating institutions.

Serve as the chair for all the steering committees of IFAD projects under the aegis of the Ministry of Agriculture and serve as the sole point for liaison with the chairmen of steering committees of projects under other ministries.

Facilitate relations of the projects, and of the programme overall, with national and international partners active in the agricultural/rural sector.

Monitor, evaluate and capitalize on the achievements and lessons learned under the programme, and provide input for common reflection on the effectiveness of collaboration, the validity of the shared objectives and the pertinence of the methods. This function would call for the presence of one or two highly qualified officers and it would enable the programme to equip itself with a single unit for monitoring impact, for critical reflection and for policy dialogue with the line ministries and with other development partners.

The institutionalization of a genuine programme would be a veritable boon to the Government in its task of monitoring and evaluating IFAD projects and would help to guide its cooperation with the Fund. It would also be a useful tool for IFAD in monitoring its cooperation strategy in Senegal and for the dialogue between the Government and the other development partners present in Senegal.

Lastly, a more frequent, if not permanent, presence of the IFAD programme officer in the country is also necessary. Options should be explored when preparing the COSOP and the pilot programme to strengthen IFAD's presence in the field.

Preparation of the new COSOP

The COSOP should embody the strategic framework for cooperation between Senegal and IFAD. It will no longer simply be an internal IFAD document but rather the joint result of close cooperation among all stakeholders. This framework for Senegal-IFAD cooperation should be squarely framed within the poverty reduction strategy paper, the agricultural sector policy and the recommendations of the programme evaluation validation workshop.

The new COSOP should set specific targets, expressed in terms of figures and dates, for the Senegal-IFAD cooperation programme and should contain performance indicators as well (e.g. those of the Millennium Development Goals).

A steering committee should be set up immediately for preparation of the COSOP and should include the various national partners, in particular farmer and women's organizations, local authorities and the ministries. A national workshop to discuss and validate the COSOP should be organized before the end of 2003.

Outlook for the project portfolio

In the local sphere, work should concentrate on successfully completing the four operations under way in the Groundnut Basin and in the Matam region, bearing in mind the points outlined above. In the Groundnut Basin, the achievements and lessons learned under the complementary support programme for groundnut producers (PROCAPA) should be integrated into the POGV, the Diourbel agroforestry project (PAGF) and the village management and development project (PADV).

In the short and medium term, new loans should support cross-cutting projects or programmes that are national in scope, complementary and linked to existing local projects, beginning with a second stage of PROMER at the national level.

The COSOP should examine the advisability of a national programme to develop rural financial services with support from IFAD in partnership with other stakeholders in the sector (specific recommendations on such a programme are annexed to the evaluation report and contained in the summary of the July 2003 validation workshop).

With regard to possible second phases of PNIR and PSAOP, the COSOP should assess the value added that could be provided by IFAD cofinancing, as compared with external support in the form of strengthened coordination and cooperation at the local level.