Interim Evaluation

Introduction

The Northern Regions Livestock Development Project (NOLIDEP) is one of the first to be implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Rural Development (MAWRD) with external donor support; others have since followed and are planned. The financing plan for NOLIDEP includes host government and beneficiary contributions together with joint and parallel financing from external donors. The joint financing comprises an IFAD loan (USD 6.02 million), a Belgian Survival Fund grant (BEF 64.1 million, equivalent to USD 2.0 million at the time of financing agreement) and a Luxembourg Government grant (USD 0.75 million) administered via the IFAD Loan Agreement. Parallel grant financing (now completed) was provided by the French Government (USD 2.0 million) and the Luxembourg Government (USD 2.0 million). The project began in May 1995 and, following a one-year extension is now due to close in December 2003.

 

The Minister of Finance in Namibia has informed IFAD of Government's interest in developing a follow-up project to NOLIDEP. Using its own resources, the MAWRD has initiated preparation of a project proposal based on a series of internal evaluations by the regions that are involved in implementing NOLIDEP. The Interim Evaluation Mission fielded in Namibia by IFAD represents a further contribution to the evaluation process.

Project design and objectives

The project had a protracted history of development and design. As originally conceived in the early-mid 1990s, it aimed to promote a semi-commercial approach to range management in some 200 communities. This was to involve: (i) training farmers to adopt environmentally sound range management practices and to control stocking rates; (ii) promoting community-based organisations which would develop the framework for providing essential services, notably extension and credit; and (iii) strengthening the institutional and policy framework for the sustainable development of the Northern Communal Areas (NCA). Subsequently, some two years after inception, the project underwent a major reformulation. The main changes were to introduce more participatory methodologies, increase the emphasis on farmer and staff training and to respond to the development challenge in the NCA through two distinct phases of implementation. The First (Pilot) Phase aimed to: (i) develop and test participatory methodologies in about 20 communities that had already become associated with the project; and (ii) fully integrate the project within the line administration of MAWRD.

The strategy for supporting sustainable rangeland development in the communal areas, which was expected to be developed during the pilot phase, would focus on achieving a better balance between livestock numbers and the availability of grazing through an extension of access to grazing into under-utilised areas based on water point development and the encouragement of community-based grazing management. If successful, the strategy would provide the basis for continuation of the project into the Second (Implementation) Phase and the replication of successful community-based initiatives in a further 40 communities. Proceeding to the Second Phase would be subject to positive conclusions from the project Mid-Term Review.

The stated objective of NOLIDEP has remained unchanged throughout these adjustments and is "…. to improve the economic and social well-being of the rural population of the NCA through the promotion of increased livestock production, greater productivity and off-take, while ensuring the development of a more sustainable range management system with more equitable distribution of assets and resources in the project area." In tackling these objectives, project resources are organised around five components, namely: (i) Sustainable Range Management; (ii) Livestock Support Services; (iii) Animal Health and Veterinary Services; (iv) Training; and (v) Institutional Support.

Implementation overview and results by components

Implementation responsibility lies with the MAWRD acting through Regional and Divisional Management Units established specifically for the purpose. That is, the project is a sub-set of the overall activities of MAWRD and its implementation necessarily reflects the evolution of MAWRD and Government policy. Most project activities are carried out directly by MAWRD personnel, with relatively limited scope for and access to implementing partners in the private sector or civil society, especially in the earlier years. The project is coordinated by the Directorate of Extension and Engineering Services (DEES) in Windhoek via a Project Coordination Committee under the chairmanship of the Permanent Secretary. Operational details are discussed in and guided by a Project Operational Committee at national level, which inter alia includes senior representatives from the management units in each of the participating regions.

During the course of implementation, successive and incremental design adjustments have been made in an effort to make the project more consistent with the socio-economic context, more inclusive of different wealth categories among the rural population and more participatory in approach. The shifts in focus were justifiable in terms of seeking also to benefit the resource poor (who tend not to be livestock owners) while continuing to support poor rural communities as a whole and enabling those who are slightly better-off and more readily able to contribute in the short-term to overall economic growth.

Although the desire has been to move towards a more all-encompassing, ‘community development' type of project, commensurate changes have not been made in either the stated objectives and anticipated outputs, or the allocation of funds to reflect the different requirements that may be expected from a programme oriented towards community development. The majority of funds have continued to be directed towards institution building in MAWRD and investments within and on behalf of communities that are geared to identifying and tackling constraints in the livestock sub-sector and improving access to water supplies for livestock and humans. This is symptomatic of a number of inherent conflicts within the project design and purpose reflecting broader national policy issues, e.g. the tension between sectoral vs. livelihood approach, and the tension between production and poverty reduction goals. MAWRD and its divisional and regional management units have faced implementation difficulties and considerable frustrations in attempting to satisfy partially incompatible expectations and differing interpretations among the several co-financiers of what is to be expected of the project.

On the recommendation of the Mid Term Review (conducted in April 1999), the project has moved into its second (implementation) phase. However, the project has struggled and lagged behind in ‘developing and testing' participatory methodologies for introducing a sustainable range management system and replicating it more widely across the NCA – a key aim of the design. The objectives of the project and the (limited) formal documentation guiding its implementation imply that the activities to be supported would need to work together in a synergistic manner if expected outputs are to be sustainable and achieved effectively and efficiently. This potential does not appear to have received due emphasis in directing support to participating communities, nor does it feature as a major concern in the Mid Term Review.

Activities included in annual work programmes have generally represented an aggregation of interventions, separately conceived by the respective technical directorates of MAWRD in the regions, as opposed to a jointly planned response to unified action programmes for communities' socio-economic advancement and the efficient, equitable and sustainable management of their resources. This is partly due to the prevailing overall institutional legacy and local environment vis-a-vis the novelty of the concept that is sought to be introduced for the first time. There certainly has been evolution and the project has played a catalytic role, but the project has been able to develop only at the pace of the institutions in which it is embedded. The installation of water supplies illustrates the point. Under traditional range management practices, the facilities act as a focus for livestock. Hence their installation can have a markedly adverse effect locally on grazing availability and range condition by increasing grazing intensity in the vicinity. There is as yet little evidence of technicians linking the siting and design of water installations to an analysis with communities of range status and the discussion of the implications for range management and herd management practices of developing additional water sources.

Sustainable Range Management. Under the water development sub-component, considerable success has been achieved in increasing the number and expanding the distribution of water points for both human and livestock consumption and in encouraging community-based management of water facilities. Under NOLIDEP, water infrastructure development required cost contributions from the recipient community (10%). Following some initial scepticism, there appears to be a growing recognition among rural communities of the importance of cost sharing, a willingness to raise the necessary funds and/or contribute labour for infrastructure installation and to pay for operation and maintenance. The experiences under this sub-component illustrate several key points: (i) the importance of carefully matching technology selection; (ii) the need to ensure adequate preparation of communities; (iii) the importance of avoiding undue pressures to disburse funds and meet physical targets at the expense of adequate preparatory work with communities and technical consultation; and (vi) the need for rigorous and effective contract supervision and management.

Under NOLIDEP, there has been a substantial accumulation of knowledge of the current status of rangeland vegetation and the patterns of range use in the NCA. The international technical assistance personnel in the early stage of the implementation prepared several potentially useful documents that could contribute to the development of sustainable range management strategies. However, with some exceptions, there is little discernible evidence of the potentially useful knowledge derived from the studies being applied in structured programmes to help livestock herders/farmers manage available vegetation resources in a more efficient and sustainable way. Good progress has been made in the development of a Geographic Information System (GIS) capability under the project. The aim is to create a comprehensive database of indigenous knowledge, natural and physical resources to generate information in a form that can be used as a spatial decision-making tool, when dealing with communities. However, the pace of skill development and application of the skills at regional level is proving slow, mainly because of small number of GIS-trained personnel, the difficulties created by staff turnover in the regions and competing calls on the time of agricultural field staff. The use of GIS-base information as a field tool during interactions with communities and for wider planning purposes has not yet been established as a regular or required feature in regional work programming.

Livestock Support Services. The adaptive trial programme was initiated by the former Range Management Specialist and covered a wide range of topics in the areas of: testing improved forage species; range reinforcement; and supplementary feeding. A high rate of staff turnover, the short periods allocated for research investigations and the lack of consistent investigation of a problem over a period of years have contributed to the lack of information output in support of extension programmes with farmers. Few communities are aware of the activities under this sub-component. However, there are indications that, in the forage deficit areas of Caprivi, a number of farmers are beginning to show interest in the outcome of tests of species with potential for supplementary feeding of livestock.

Potential areas of project involvement in livestock extension activities lie in aspects of livestock-environment interaction, herd management and livestock marketing. Fodder balance aspects related to the interaction between livestock and the environment were to have been based on the outcome of the adaptive research programme. As noted above, there is little output from the programme that could be used in livestock extension programmes. Another difficulty for the project in involving itself in livestock extension is the fact the technical staff operating at field level are principally crops oriented, relatively few in number, and involved in a wide range of activities. Technical staff with experience in livestock subjects are either researchers or staff of DVS, the latter having responsibility primarily for disease surveillance and scheduled disease control and not for the provision of advisory services on animal husbandry.

Only limited progress has been made so far in livestock marketing, although the construction of auction pens represents a potentially positive contribution to boosting livestock marketing. However, this has not been linked with basic awareness creation and training on livestock marketing. Infrastructure and training are only likely to pay off in terms of marketed production if the involved stakeholders succeed in introducing a marketing information system that would increase livestock owners incentive to produce for the market. A detailed marketing study has been completed under NOLIDEP (April 2000) that provides a number of useful pointers for future marketing-related investment. However, its recommendations have not yet been reflected in adjustments to work programmes.

The Small Stock Seed Capital Fund (SSSCF) was specifically introduced as one means for the project to secure direct benefits for women and poorer households. An internal evaluation of this programme in NCD showed 65% of beneficiaries to be women. There is a high degree of satisfaction with the SSSCF programme among the recipients of stock. However, the response gives an incomplete picture of overall scheme effectiveness. Given the high level of subsidy involved in the scheme (90%), the recipient continues to enjoy a net benefit provided her/his losses through stock mortality do not exceed 90%. With seemingly few exceptions, the total number of goats kept is currently lower than the number of goats received; hence there is no overall economic gain from the intervention. While the communities selected the scheme participants, decisions often appear to have been made by local headmen, perhaps contributing to the tendency for older people to benefit at the expense of younger members of the community. Nevertheless, the scheme has had the benefit of enabling some individuals to become livestock owners for the first time. Moreover, the initiative has shown that positive benefits can derive from attention to small stock and provides a number of useful pointers on how procedural improvements could be made in future.

Animal Health and Veterinary Services. NOLIDEP implementers have made considerable progress in installing facilities, within communities, geared to improving animal health. Facilities include crush pens and, in some localities, dip tanks for small stock. In some instances, farmers have expressed concern about the standardised design of crush pens (too small), the materials used in construction (brought from outside) and the current state of repair of the facilities. Their comments highlight the inadequacies of discussion/analysis with farmers of local circumstances before proceeding with installation and indicate shortcomings in relation to farmers' perceptions of ownership of the structures. Access to veterinary services has been substantially improved. Farmers have seen immediate benefit from the project's double strategy of (i) establishing VRECs, each with a resident Animal Health Inspector and (ii) training a para-professional cadre of Community Animal Health Assistants (CAHA) in order to bring basic animal health services even closer to the point of need. The process of privatising the sale of veterinary drugs among licensed agents is ongoing and is likely to contribute further to improving animal health status, at least in less remote areas where human population densities are higher and retailers may have a greater expectation of profitable sales.

Training. Staff training has included in-service training of counterpart staff by contracted technical assistance personnel; provisions for overseas training and participation in study tours; and formalised, technically oriented courses. Courses have also been given in the use of selected participatory techniques and training to enhance gender awareness, with a view to improving extension staff skills in interacting with communities during the identification and planning of community-based investments. However, due to the frequent turnover of staff, the regions have faced difficulty in maintaining consistency in terms of implementation skills and operating capacity.

Farmer training is the responsibility of extension staff. Training opportunities provided under NOLIDEP have principally been linked with the planning and introduction of physical infrastructure and activities financed under the SSSCF and CDF sub-components. Training recipients have included traditional leaders, committee members taking the lead in organising community members as a basis for the introduction of infrastructure-related and income generating enterprises. Community members have also been identified as suitable candidates to become CAHAs. Training has mainly been provided ‘in-house' by the MAWRD. There is a clear argument for increasing the use of contracted training services (both for staff and farmer training) from local institutions, civil society or the private sector according to their comparative advantage.

Institutional Support. Institutional support during the early stages of the project was characterised by a major provision of technical assistance personnel who were charged with responsibility for implementation and the in-service training of counterpart staff. In practice, the development of local capacity was not effectively done at the outset and the project became over-dependent on the technical assistants, partly due to Government's inability to provide counterparts and partly due to attitudes among some of the technical assistance staff. Overall costs associated with technical assistance, which were supported principally through grant funding, have been judged to be extremely high in comparison with the output. Nonetheless, it must be recognised that prior to Independence, relatively little attention had been given to building administrative capacity in and for the communal areas. In this context, the benefits derived from technical assistants' involvement in terms of contributing to building an institutional framework for development, introducing and/or strengthening management procedures and establishing a much-increased knowledge of livelihood systems in the NCA must be viewed as an important contribution and a foundation for making further gains.

Project performance and impact

The project has been instrumental in building a foundation for public services to continue to support rural development in the NCA through the strengthened operations of the regional structures. MAWRD facilities have been improved and expanded, organisational and administrative skills substantially improved and field operatives' capabilities enhanced through training in interactive skills for dealing with rural communities as well as in specialised technical skills. Ministry personnel have been both responsive and responsible in dealing with project organisation and administration and implementers have shown commendable enthusiasm and willingness to undertake their roles, often in difficult operating circumstances. These represent major achievements given the weaknesses that characterised public services in the communal areas in the period immediately following Independence and Government's continuing difficulty in maintaining staffing levels. NOLIDEP has been instrumental in encouraging the adoption of a more integrated approach to agricultural development planning at regional and national levels, to the benefit not only of the project but also to other rural development-based projects and programmes of MAWRD. Substantial efforts continue to be made to improve the project's poverty reduction focus, not least through further adjustment of policies and legislation affecting rural development in the communal areas. A number of these adjustments have been initiated as the result of actions taken under the project or have been influenced by project experience and performance.

The project has established a high profile in participating communities throughout the NCA. The most visible and widespread benefit has derived from investments in water supply installation under the Sustainable Range Management component. In most cases, the community at large has benefited, although livestock owners may have gained particular advantage. Households benefiting from the more specifically targeted Small Stock Seed Capital Fund (SSSCF) and micro-enterprise investments (mainly poorer households and women) have established potential sources of economic empowerment previously unavailable to poorer communities. Under the animal health component, veterinary services and veterinary drugs have become more widely available and more readily accessible to livestock owners in rural areas. Of particular note are: the establishment of the Veterinary Rural Extension Centres; the operation of a revolving fund for the supply of veterinary drugs, the initiation of private sector involvement in veterinary drug supply and the training of Community Health Assistants as an additional, voluntry cadre of para-professionals identified from within the community to provide a primary tier of veterinary service in their locality.

Rural households in communities engaged under the project have been assisted to take a more pro-active role in the identification of priority areas for investment and have begun to contribute towards the costs of such investment. Some gains have been made in terms of communities being empowered to organise themselves, through various committee structures, to manage capital assets supplied under the project. In many cases, communities have shown that it is possible for them to take an active role as partners in the development process, organise themselves to access support, develop a sense of ‘ownership' of facilities, contribute to the cost of investment in capital assets and begin to assume responsibility for the ongoing operation and maintenance of the facility. Again, this represents a substantial change from the earlier situation where, to the extent that goods and services were made available at all in rural areas, the communities' role remained an entirely passive one.

Despite the above gains, there can be doubts about the replicability of activities in a larger number of communities across a wider geographic area through operational procedures that place heavy reliance on MAWRD implementation capacity and budgetary resources. Likewise, the benefits secured over the short-term through several of the project's interventions call for complementary strengthening in order to ensure sustainability. For example, there are dangers of negative environmental effects in the vicinity of water points in the absence of parallel attention being given to systems of livestock management. Similarly, short-term gains from the expanded ownership of animals under the SSSCF may be in jeopardy as a result of inadequate attention to aspects of animal husbandry and health care, both prior to and after the introduction of animals, while a number of small businesses supported via the Community Development Fund have involved heavy risk-taking, having been established without prior close assessment of their financial viability.

Monitoring, evaluation and impact reporting has remained a weak aspect despite the concerns repeatedly raised and suggestions made by supervision missions. Secondary data on NOLIDEP collated by MAWRD in the regions generally do not permit the nature of induced changes to be quantified, other than in terms of physical progress monitoring. This gives cause for concern, not least for the Government, which needs to be in a position to assess the economic value of its investment in the project and the effectiveness of the procedures and principles it represents in accelerating a reduction in poverty. Notwithstanding the considerable efforts during the course of implementation, the regions have not yet been able to establish a consistent management information system for the project. A major contributory cause for inadequacies is linked to the inability to introduce implementation, monitoring and evaluation guidelines from the outset of the project and shortfalls in the level of technical and administrative guidance to the regions from MAWRD directorates. Closer attention to these aspects could have helped also to retain the focus of implementing agents on the underlying technical and development principles and objectives of the project as well as the inter-relationships and potential synergies between activities.

Suitable impact indicators would reflect and be measured in terms of the project's stated objectives and expected component/activity outputs. In the case of water supplies, valid questions to be asked in assessing impact would include: what effect has access to water in areas of previously under-utilised rangeland had on patterns of livestock herding, the time taken to water stock or the frequency with which stock can be watered in comparison to the pre-investment situation? In the case of staff training, how has training influenced the content and effectiveness of work programmes? Unfortunately, collated information does not permit this type of assessment to be made for any of the project interventions. It should also be possible to link such benefits to the costs of interventions, thereby helping management to assess cost-effectiveness and adjust operations accordingly. Again, this type of assessment is difficult to derive from project information as presently recorded in the regions.

Conclusions

Opportunities exist to build upon the experiences of NOLIDEP implementation and consolidate gains already made. However, the question remains of the extent to which the approach and interventions introduced to date can be replicated using existing operational procedures and through the continued heavy reliance on MAWRD implementation capacity, unless there are substantial increases in funding allocations and staff numbers. Neither of these is likely to occur so easily, suggesting that further adjustments to institutional arrangements and operational relationships between the public sector, private sector and civil society need to be made.

Regardless of the structure and content of any successor project, it will be essential for the future of livestock production in the NCA to place rural livelihood development in its environmental context if the fragile resource base is to generate sustainable economic growth and social well being. In this regard it will be important for staff at an implementation level to be fully aware of national and international principles on environmental management to which Government subscribes and of national policy directives - such as those embodied in the National Plan to Combat Desertification and forthcoming legislation under the Water Bill - and to conduct field programmes that are consistent with and supportive of those principles.

The design has proved over-ambitious with respect to: (i) the nature of changes in people's livestock production priorities and management patterns anticipated under the project; (ii) overcoming the challenges associated with development of a sustainable range management system in communally used lands; and (iii) the rate at which sustainable changes to production systems and livelihood patterns can be encouraged in rural communities with entrenched, traditional views given the realities of implementation capacity in the regions.

Key lessons to be drawn from the experience of NOLIDEP implementation include:

a. the need to give adequate emphasis, time and resources to the community mobilisation process, which should not be compromised by aspirations to meet pre-set physical targets and/or to speed up project fund disbursement rates. A longer-term, programme perspective would be beneficial for future investments operating in a similar context;

b. that poorer members of rural society can be reached through specifically designed and targeted measures and need not rely entirely on a ‘trickle down' effect or gaining benefit along with the rest of their community in initiatives directed towards the community as a whole;

c. that project objectives and anticipated outputs should be realistically set in relation to: the operational context; aspects that the project as designed (i.e. its components and activities) can be expected to influence; the resources available (human and financial); and the time allocated;

d. the constraints, in terms of project performance and effectiveness, that can arise for want of adequate implementation guidelines as an aid to maintaining focus on project aims and directives and measuring project impact in relation to stated outputs and objectives. In the case of NOLIDEP, the lack of formal guidelines caused insufficient attention to be given to achieving the intended complementarity and potential synergy between components;

e. the benefits to be derived from operational collaboration between MAWRD and other development partners and the scope which exists to build on and expand such initiatives in the future; and
f. the importance of fostering a common understanding and interpretation of underlying development themes and principles at policy and implementation levels among project/programme stakeholders if frustrations and false expectations during implementation are to be avoided.

Recommendations

Given the short time remaining before project completion, the mission does not recommend attempting to make structural changes in operational procedures at this juncture. The recommended focus is to (a) consolidate efforts through follow-up support to those staff, communities, committees within communities, para-professionals and farmers already associated with NOLIDEP and (b) to the extent possible within the framework of the agreed Annual Work Programme and Budget for 2002/03, initiate selected actions that would facilitate the design and implementation of any successor project(s) in line with agreed approaches to stimulating more broadly based economic growth in the NCA. More specifically:

a. the MAWRD could continue to provide leadership -but firmer than ever- as managers and to guide the regions in technical and administrative matters in the interests of maintaining the integrity of the project and ensuring the adoption of ‘best practice' in implementing project-financed activities;

b. directorate officers at national level to provide project implementers in the RMUs/DMU with further guidance on fitting their increasingly inter-disciplinary planning at the local level into an annual planning and budgeting framework that remains structurally linked at a ministry level to the programmes and priorities of the respective directorates and is considered to be distinct from the separately funded programmes of NOLIDEP;

c. establish systems for local level monitoring and impact assessment;

d. conduct a series of quantitative assessments of the utilisation and impact of physical and financial assets provided to date in relation to indicators that reflect the project's expected outputs and objectives;

e. the Project Coordination Committee to provide guidelines to the regions on general principles and procedures to be followed, training standards and curricula requirements for specialist staff and para-professionals and the application of management information systems to be used in designing/implementing field activities;

f. the MAWRD to become represented in the Namibia Association of Community Based Natural Resources Management Support Organisation (the Ministry of Environment and Tourism is already a member) as one means of broadening exposure to other ongoing initiatives in fields relevant to its operations in the NCA and other communal areas; and

g. the Project Coordination Committee to encourage RMUs/DMU to become more pro-active in facilitating linkages between organisations/interest groups in communities and available sources of information, advice and marketing opportunity in the private sector and civil society.

In looking to the post-project period and the design of a possible successor investment(s), it is recommended that debate should focus attention on:

a. placing people and the sustainable use of resources at the centre of the development approach rather than the delivery of specific, pre-determined investment options;

b. helping to secure access by the rural poor to natural resources, principally land, vegetation and water, as a fundamental pre-requisite to the introduction of sustainable resource management systems;

c. supporting local level, representative organisations that can play a vital role in creating an environment conducive to economic growth and promoting equitable asset distribution;

d. given the rate of human population increase prevalent in the NCA, aiming to reduce the proportion of the population reliant on primary agricultural production through stimulating an appropriate diversification in economic opportunity; an essential requirement to lowering the number of people living in poverty;

e. contributing to mainstreaming recognition of gender concerns in all activities. A special focus on women would be justifiable given the high proportion of de facto or de jure rural female-headed households amongst whom poverty is often more prevalent;

f. introducing specific actions and investments that will enable rural communities and households to mitigate the effects of HIV/AIDS; and

g. considering the adoption of a longer-term, programmatic approach to planning and financing in order to cater to the needs of fully participatory approaches to poverty reduction and equitable economic development and for ensuring sustainable management of common property resources in an extremely fragile environment.