Kirehe Community-based Watershed Management Project - IOE
Kirehe Community-based Watershed Management Project
Project performance evaluation
The Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD has prepared a performance evaluation report on the "Kirehe Community-based Watershed Management Project" in Rwanda. The project was successful in achieving its objective of fostering increase of traditional crops such as rice, maize, vegetables and milk production. Women beneficiaries were not left behind economically, and innovations such as the flexi-biogas system freed the time they had spent in fetching firewood.
Yet, the lack of effective marketing linkages and competitive prices for producers meant that the attempt at integrating farmer beneficiaries into complete value chains remained incipient. The project also failed to link beneficiaries with rural financial institutions – linkages which would have been important for financing production and value addition.
The evaluation highlights the need to adopt a longer-term programmatic approach in the case of development projects that involve a simultaneous, coordinated and comprehensive approach to rural poverty alleviation in a particular area. It also recommends ensuring that value chain development is truly demand-oriented by involving market actors such as traders and private companies when integrating value chain components in principally supply-side projects.