Core learning partnership and users of the evaluation

In line with the Evaluation Policy of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Fund's Office of Evaluation (IOE) undertook in 2009 a Completion Evaluation of the IFAD-financed West Guangxi Poverty-Alleviation Project (WGPAP) in the People's Republic of China. The main objective of this evaluation was to assess the performance and impact of the project and generate lessons learnt that will guide the Government of China and IFAD in ongoing and future agriculture and rural development programmes in the country.

IFAD's Evaluation Policy, while underscoring the need for independence, recognizes the importance of involving the main stakeholders throughout the evaluation process. This is fundamental in ensuring the engagement of stakeholders in a fruitful collaboration and to facilitate the discussion around the recommendations emerging from the evaluation and their adoption. To this end, a core learning partnership was formed, composed of the main users of the evaluation. Specifically, it included: (i) the Ministry of Finance of the People's Republic of China; (ii) the Foreign Capital Project Management Centre, State Council Leading Group of Poverty Alleviation and Development; (iii) the Agricultural Department of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (GZAR); (iv) the Guangxi Administration Centre of Foreign Funded Projects for Agriculture (GACFFPA) having functioned as Project Management Office (PMO); (v) the Rural Cooperative Credit Union (RCCU) of GZAR; (vi) the Women's Federation (WF) of GZAR; (vii) the Asia and Pacific Division of the IFAD Programme Management Department (APR); (viii) the IFAD Country Presence Office in China; (ix) the World Food Programme (WFP), China Office; and (x) the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) that acted as the project's cooperating institution until 2007.

On 15 January 2010, members of the core learning partnership, along with other stakeholders, convened in Nanning, the regional capital of GZAR, and held the final learning workshop on the evaluation. This Agreement at Completion Point summarizes the main findings and recommendations as contained in the evaluation report. It also benefits from the discussions around the main issues emerging from the evaluation debated at the learning workshop.

The ACP has been reached between IFAD (represented by the Programme Management Department) and the Government of China (represented by the Ministry of Finance) and reflects their understanding of the main findings from the Completion Evaluation, as well as their commitment to adopt and implement the recommendations contained in section C of this ACP within specific timeframes.

Main evaluation findings

The West Guangxi Poverty-Alleviation Project was relevant to the needs of the rural poor in that it addressed all important dimensions of poverty. Its design was consistent with both national policies and IFAD strategies, and integrated lessons emerging from other IFAD-funded projects in China. By selecting poverty counties through a focused targeting in accordance to the vulnerability assessment and mapping (VAM) method developed by WFP, dimensions that were highly relevant to the needs of the poor in the project area were included right from the outset at project start. The inclusion of a rural financial services component based on the Rural Credit Cooperatives (RCC) network substantially enhanced relevance. The whole design process can be considered as good practice, given the strong synergy of three key ingredients, namely quality at entry, implementation capacity and a conducive environment.

Effectiveness was highly satisfactory. That is, the overall project objective of achieving a sustainable increase in productive capacity, both on- and off-farm, and to offer increased access to economic and social resources, including financial services, education, health and social networks was successfully met. One of the key ingredients of effectiveness was the high coverage achieved across the ten project counties. Overall efficiency was satisfactory, but the project at completion did not conclusively prove that the economic rate of return (ERR) at completion was probably higher than the ERR assumed at appraisal, as the study commissioned to this effect by the project was not entirely rigorous. Such studies, if carried out with the necessary methodological rigour, are highly commendable with regards to evaluation capacity development, for which China shows strong interest.

Poverty reduction impacts of WGPAP were in the satisfactory range for all five impact domains. Despite the existence of mainstream poverty-alleviation programs funded by the government, impact in the project counties and townships could be attributed to the project with a good degree of certainty, as; 75 per cent of the project beneficiaries received support from the WGPAP only, inferring that the impacts observed can be attributed to the project.  Household income and assets progressed at a significant pace, inferring that the poverty reduction targets were attained. In the domains of social capital and empowerment, food security and natural resources and environment, the evaluation mission also perceived significant impacts. Systematic and broad-based training activities and literacy courses, especially for women, greatly contributed to this success. The evaluation noticed, in relation to the impact domain of institutions and policies, remarkable progress in service delivery capacity of county and township authorities as well as of the RCC network, but also had to recognize that generic institutional capacity at administrative village level remained weak. The project strengthened the coordination capacity of village cadres, but did not focus on management capacity. For instance, the village implementation groups (VIGs) were to include a village accountant, whereas none of the village committees interviewed by the evaluation mission had one.

Two key factors of sustainability were, and still are:

• The existence of mainstream government programmes in poverty alleviation - to which WGPAP was complementary - and
• The seamless integration of the project management organization at county and township levels into local government structure.

These factors outweigh factors that may constrain sustainability, such as the still perceivable subsidy elements in the formation of interest and refinancing rates of the RCC network and the high level of public service delivery in remote areas. In terms of innovation and replication and scaling up, the project went at length in capturing and documenting innovations, but it received insufficient innovation inputs from IFAD, especially in terms of innovative agricultural technologies to address soil fertility, despite the pronounced innovation drive in the 2005 country strategic opportunities paper (COSOP).

The WGPAP storyline of success is the result of a strong synergy between three key ingredients, namely (i) quality at entry; (ii) implementation capacity; and (iii) a conducive environment in terms of support provided by the central and local governments, a stable political environment and a booming economy. The Completion Evaluation formulated the four main recommendations detailed below with the intention of fostering such synergy in future projects and programs between the Government of China and IFAD.

Recommendations agreed upon by all partners

All the recommendations derived from the Completion Evaluation have been accepted by partners involved. The paragraphs below provide details on the nature and on the implementation arrangements, including assigned responsibilities and deadlines as applicable, for the four main recommendation and the 13 derived sub-recommendations.

Recommendation 1: Design of future IFAD-funded projects in China.  The design of future IFAD funded rural development projects in China should continue to be responsive to the multidimensional character of poverty and the growing expertise of national stakeholders in this kind of operations, in particular:

• Targeting of project townships should continue to be based on factual indicators. In projects focused on service provision, all villages within one township should be included in the project, and natural villages more clearly identified. This is recommended in order to enhance critical mass in service delivery and would be congruent with the "block development" approach, which the Government of China is currently implementing. Likewise, a transparent assessment of the special needs of the various ethnic minority groups is critical.
• The design process should replicate WGPAP's good practice of strong involvement of local expertise at all levels, including from the anticipated target population. This should include the joint calculation of ERRs at appraisal, and a set of guidelines that enable projects to revisit the ERR calculation at completion based on own expertise.
• In settings where food-for-work (FFW) and food-for-training (FFT) is deemed essential for broad participation and coverage, a second-generation solution should be devised with the Chinese authorities, for instance by linking donor-funded projects with government programs for infrastructure and human capacity building. The government has increasingly stepped up investment in rural infrastructure, and in human capacity building (e.g. training for migrant workers). The IFAD country program is linked with government programs to build similar complementarities. In countries where food aid continues to be policy, the lessons from the IFAD-WPF partnership in the WGPAP should be learnt.

Recommendation 2: Institutional partnerships. Project partnerships should extend over the boundaries of provincial and local government in the strict sense, that is:

• VIGs or analogous bodies at village level should not only play a role for planning and monitoring purposes, but should be strengthened in their core management capacity, with special regard to service delivery functions and equitable gender representation in positions of responsibility.
• Partnership with provincial RCC networks should be put on a completely new footing, by taking into account the ongoing reform and by agreeing on a set of information to be shared that is conducive to a real-time assessment of loan portfolios and banking performance indicators in general.
• Key areas of policy dialogue should be determined systematically and given due and documented attention over the project implementation period.

Recommendation 3: Role of innovation in IFAD-funded projects.  Building on the orientations of the 2005 COSOP, new IFAD-funded projects should put significantly more emphasis on innovation and its promotion, in particular:

• Ambitions of the project partners regarding innovations should be screened systematically from formulation stage onwards and be periodically reassessed.
• Particular attention should be devoted to the identification of local sources of innovation and their mobilization during project implementation.
• Innovations that exist or emerge in the global context should be made available to IFAD-funded projects more pro-actively, possibly also via IFAD grants.
• Priority areas should encompass innovations that respond to global challenges, such as food security, soil fertility, alternative energies and climate change.

Recommendation 4: From M&E (monitoring and evaluation) to MIS (management information system). New IFAD-funded projects should take stock from the accumulated experience of the WGPAP and actively foster a quantum leap in the state-of-the-art of M&E and MIS, with the aim to make advanced M&E and MIS methods a mainstream feature in China. This would include the following:

• The generic requirements of an overarching, yet concise, M&E system for multidimensional poverty-alleviation projects in marginal rural areas should be defined, best in a joint effort between national expertise and IFAD resources.
• The basic architecture of a real-time MIS, based upon such M&E requirements, should be designed in a way that it can be used for a wide array of IFAD-funded projects, in China and possibly also elsewhere. For this to substantiate, the data capturing and storing capabilities of an M&E system must evolve into a real time management system allowing easy analysis across all relevant variables, and thus require a program basis going well beyond the accumulation of mere spread sheets. Again, a partnership between national expertise and IFAD would be advisable.
• The above recommendations would give a particularly concrete meaning to the development of local evaluation capacity, an initiative that IFAD has decided to support in China.

Implementation responsibilities and proposed timeframe

IFAD and the Government of China, with the contribution and support of local partners as appropriate, will be responsible for implementing all of the above recommendations and sub-recommendations. Such recommendations will be taken into account in formulating the new results-based COSOP and new IFAD-funded operations in China.