Objectives and main lines of the evaluation. In 2009, the Independent Office of Evaluation (IOE) of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) undertook its first evaluation of IFAD's country programme in Niger. This country programme evaluation (CPE), performed in accordance with IFAD's Evaluation Policy and the manual on methodology prepared by IOE, has the main objectives of evaluating the performance and impact of IFAD's operations in Niger and proposing a series of conclusions and recommendations that can be used as input for the Fund's future country strategy. To attain these objectives, the evaluation examines the performance of three components of the partnership between the country's Government and IFAD, which reinforce each other mutually: the portfolio of projects and programmes, non-lending activities, and the two country strategic opportunities programmes (COSOPs) for Niger. The evaluation of the portfolio, which includes seven projects and programmes, covers the period from 1997 to 2009.

National context. Niger is a landlocked Sahelian country covered for two thirds by desert. In 2007, 62 per cent of the population still lived below the poverty line, of which two thirds in rural areas. Niger's other socioeconomic indicators are also quite low. Women and young people are particularly affected by poverty. About 82 per cent of the population is rural and concentrated in the southern fringe of the country. Population growth, which is one of the highest in the world, poses a considerable challenge for the country's development. The socio-political landscape has been regularly marked by social troubles, internal armed conflicts, and political-institutional crises. The macroeconomic framework has, nonetheless, improved in the last ten years, particularly thanks to structural reforms and a significant reduction in the foreign debt. However, governance in Niger continues to be affected by heavy reliance on foreign aid, the instability of institutions and their leaders, insufficient means available to the decentralized technical services and communes, and widespread corruption in the administration. These problems of governance have held back the implementation of poverty-reduction strategies. Foreign aid for agriculture and rural development in the country has grown considerably, particularly between 1998 and 2007 (US$553.4 million in six years), but the impact of that aid suffers from the country's poor absorption capacity. Investments in socioeconomic infrastructure are still very low. Niger's private sector and civil society organisations are scantly developed and also live to a large extent from development aid.

The predominance of crop and livestock farming and poor intra-sector diversification make Niger's economy very vulnerable to climate and market vagaries. The informal sector accounts for 70 per cent of gross domestic product, which partly explains the narrowness of the country's tax base. Traditional subsistence agriculture is in crisis under the combined effects of population pressure and the heavy degradation of natural resources. Consequently, rural families must turn to markets to buy local or imported food supplies. They are therefore forced to diversify their sources of income. Niger has significant water potential, with less than one third currently being used. The limited access to land by vulnerable farming families, women in particular, is a major obstacle to improving their income and food security.

IFAD in Niger. IFAD has prepared two COSOPs for Niger, respectively in 1999 and 2006. The strategic objectives of the 1999 COSOP involved improving access to financial services by the poor, natural resource management, materialising the opportunities offered by the regional market, taking a participative approach to the development of grass-roots organizations, and improving access to basic social services. The 2006 COSOP abandons the objective related to rural financial services but, in the context of the 2004-2005 food crisis, adds the strategic objective of reducing the vulnerability of rural families and improving their food security. With the 2006 COSOP, IFAD and the Government agreed to focus the interventions financed by IFAD on the Maradi region, which is where 20 per cent of the country's population lives. This was the region hardest hit by the 2004-2005 food crisis. With regard to subsectors, the two COSOPs focused mainly on agricultural development and natural resource management, local capacity-building and institutional development, support for rural financial services and the creation of local investment funds, and support for rural infrastructure and services. IFAD's target groups are small producers (farmers and herdsmen), the most vulnerable women, and unemployed rural youths.

Since 1980, IFAD has helped to finance eight projects and programmes in Niger for a total cost of US$234.6 million, of which 45 per cent was covered by IFAD loans. Consequently, in the last 10 years, IFAD has provided about 8.5 per cent of all aid to Niger's rural and agricultural sectors. The budget allocated to Niger under IFAD's performance-based allocation system (PBAS) has risen from US$4 million to US$6.2 million a year between 2005 and 2009. The allocation established for the 2007-2009 PBAS cycle was US$16.65 million and it will be doubled for the 2010-2012 cycle.

By and large, the projects are intended to improve the incomes and living conditions of poor rural populations. The specific objectives of the evaluated portfolio relate mainly to natural resource management, the development of grass-roots institutions and capacity building, better access to rural financial services, higher productivity in crop and livestock farming, and better access to basic social services in rural areas. Technical-assistance grants support different areas such as research and development, innovation and dissemination of improved farming technologies, infrastructure, natural resource management, agricultural development, etc. The grants, which are generally linked to an IFAD-financed project, total about US$1.62 million.

IFAD's activities in Niger are carried out by government institutions. However, applying the principle of outsourcing, implementation of most of the activities is delegated to NGOs, research departments, or deconcentrated technical services, with the aim of promoting development of the supply of local services. Partnerships with other technical and financial partners are envisaged to finance and implement projects, partly under the coordination mechanisms between the Government and donors that are already in place. The projects financed by IFAD in Niger have been cofinanced mainly by the World Bank, the French Development Agency, the World Food Programme, the West African Development Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, and the Belgian Fund for Food Security.

Assessment of the portfolio. On the whole, the projects' objectives are consistent with the Government's and IFAD's policies and strategies. The portfolio responds adequately to the needs of the rural poor and shows good flexibility to adapt to urgencies and new developments. Since the objectives and scope of the early projects exceeded the managerial capacity of the project teams, projects have more recently evolved toward stronger involvement of local institutions and narrower geographic focus of activities. In contrast, not enough attention has been paid to irrigated farming, animal husbandry, off-farm activities, or market access for the rural poor, given the sizeable potential in these areas. Partnerships with decentralized technical services and communes (which were only created in 2004) have not been sufficiently developed but they will be central to the next project cofinanced by IFAD (Agricultural and Rural Rehabilitation and Development Initiative Project-Institutional Strengthening Component – ARRDI-ISC – ). Consequently, the relevance of the portfolio has been moderately satisfactory.

With regard to the effectiveness of the portfolio, the best results have been obtained in the rehabilitation of degraded farmland and, to a lesser extent, in the management of water for small-scale irrigation. On the local level, these results have helped to increase the productivity of crop and livestock farming. There has also been a modest improvement in access by the population to rural financial services, but it has generally not continued after project completion. The construction and rehabilitation of rural roads has exceeded expectations. Overall, however, the results have not matched expectations or needs. The projects did not contribute significantly to the establishment of effective management of community natural resources or to the development of financial services accessible to the rural poor. Furthermore, the establishment of hydraulic, educational, and sanitary infrastructure falls far short of expectations. For these reasons, the effectiveness of the portfolio is moderately unsatisfactory.

The start-up and management processes, which had formerly been relatively slow, appear to have improved considerably in the last few years. The project implementation-to-disbursements ratio has systematically been very low, which is explained among other reasons, by the weak capacity of the project management units, frequent interruptions of financing, and the fact that all the projects completed in Niger took at least one year longer than planned. The cost of project implementation is generally below standard costs in Niger, particularly thanks to the good involvement of communities and government services in the works, and to favourable topographical and climate conditions. Returns on investments however vary considerably in function of the possibilities of assessing their value and the difficulties in doing so. The project components related to rural finance have generally generated significant losses of funds to the detriment of the efficiency of the portfolio. Consequently, this aspect is moderately unsatisfactory.

An assessment of the impact of the projects on rural poverty indicates that they have contributed significantly - albeit within a limited area - to improving the income and food security of rural families thanks to interventions in the fields of farm production, natural resource management, and off-farm activities. However, in many cases, this improvement is vulnerable to external shocks. The portfolio has also had a modest impact on human capital development, especially in education and health; social capital, and empowerment, particularly for women; and rural institutions and policies. Accordingly, the impact of the portfolio on rural poverty has been moderately satisfactory.

To ensure the sustainability of the results, the projects provided for exit strategies essentially based on the participation of grass-roots organizations and on building their capacity, two aspects that in themselves vary considerably in sustainability. The sustainability of the results in natural resource management and agricultural production is quite good thanks to the simplicity of the structures and the close involvement of the population. However, land tenure insecurity, poor management of water, and land degradation are threats that weigh on that sustainability. The sustainability of socioeconomic infrastructure varies in function of the quality of its construction and the competence of the government services that take it over. Training and advisory services for project beneficiaries are doomed to disappear at project completion. This because little efforts were made to bolster the capacity of the decentralized technical services and because local services, whose development was encouraged by the projects, are insufficiently are supported once outside funding is exhausted. Consequently, the sustainability of the results of the projects in the IFAD portfolio is moderately unsatisfactory.

IFAD's portfolio in Niger has promoted many agroecological, social, institutional, and methodological innovations, thanks to the tripartite relationship between the projects, research institutions, and beneficiary groups. Agroecological innovations are disseminated virtually spontaneously, as long as the technologies are simple and useful. For the institutional and methodological innovations, on the contrary, dissemination often stumbles against a lack of means or institutional obstacles. Given the above, the performance of the portfolio in the area of innovation is satisfactory.

Performance of the partners. The Government of Niger has recently established a coherent economic and social development framework which facilitates the insertion of projects, progress in governance, and the improvement of the country's macroeconomic situation. However, the structural weakness of the administration and the decentralized technical services, the political instability, and the lack of realism in the design of projects as far as the absorption capacity of government institutions is concerned, are factors that have limited the Government's performance, which has had very negative consequences on the performance of the portfolio. Despite the many obstacles, IFAD has continually maintained a loan portfolio in Niger that is consistent with national priorities and the needs of the rural poor. IFAD has made considerable efforts in the area of partnerships, particularly through joint programming and promotion of the coordination mechanism among the technical and financial partners in the Maradi region. However, portfolio management has suffered from overly light indirect supervision and communications difficulties. The evaluators also question the merit of the recent decision to end two projects early. The United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), IFAD's main cooperating agency in Niger, has acquitted itself well in loan administration, although the slowness with which it has processed non objections and disbursement requests has resulted in delays in the provisioning of projects. UNOPS has carried out supervision missions at regular intervals, but its recommendations deal mainly with general aspects of project management and neglect strategic directions and their results. This gap can perhaps be explained by the narrow composition of the supervision teams and the insufficient frequency and length of the missions. Applying the outsourcing principle, the projects subcontract many activities to NGOs, private enterprises, and grass-roots organizations. The performance of the NGOs is quite weak because of their lack of capacity, which often translates into a work overload for the project teams. The Maradi region has a network of competent entrepreneurs, thanks to the many donor interventions that have already taken place. However, private enterprises do not perform strongly for three reasons: insufficient technical and managerial capacity, lack of equipment, and lack of control by government services. Grass-roots organizations have made an important contribution to the development activities initiated under IFAD projects. However, these organizations present many shortcomings: illiteracy, poor grasp of procedures, lack of transparency, weak financial and technical capacity, etc.

Non-lending activities. IFAD's programming has the merit of mobilizing multiple technical assistance grants (for more than US$1.6 million) and incorporating them into different projects, thereby assuring good synergy between grants and loans. These grants in different fields have had a positive impact on the implementation of IFAD projects. However, the results obtained from the grants have not always benefited from a strategy to capitalize on and disseminate the lessons learned. IFAD's participation in policy coordination has essentially been through cofinanced projects and some technical-cooperation grants. Pertinent issues have been addressed, such as the national microfinance strategy, regionalization of the rural development strategy, and the national cereal banks management strategy. With regard to partnerships, IFAD's participation has been satisfactory, particularly through its involvement in joint programming under the United Nations Development Assistance Framework, the prominent role it played in the adoption of the Maradi Letter of Understanding, the cofinancing of projects with other technical and financial partners, and the coordination mechanism between the Government and the partners in Maradi (although the mechanism has never really functioned, particularly because of the difficulties encountered by the Agricultural and Rural Rehabilitation and Development Initiative Project). Knowledge management was very weak in the first IFAD projects evaluated under the CPE, but with the PPILDA project, IFAD's programme has paid increasing attention to this aspect since 2006-2007. The performance of non-lending activities as a whole is moderately satisfactory.

Performance of the COSOPs. The two country strategies (1999 and 2006) were prepared before the new IFAD guidelines on results-based country strategic opportunities programmes. Hence, these COSOPs did not provide for a coherent and methodical lending and non-lending activities programme, or for pilot projects or monitoring and evaluation. However, both COSOPs present a sound analysis of the structural causes of poverty in the country and their strategic objectives coincide with national development policies and strategies in effect and with IFAD's mandate. The 1999 COSOP responded well to the needs of the rural poor, since it aimed at securing natural productive potential, diversifying economic activities with a view to their integration into markets, strengthening their means of action through grass-roots organizations, and improving access to social services, particularly for women. However, the need to develop financial services for the rural poor was not firmly rooted in an analysis of the needs of that population, and the COSOP failed to realize the risks inherent in the vast geographic area and the very wide thematic diversity of the interventions. The current COSOP, which dates from 2006, is very strongly shaped by the 2004-2005 food crisis, since it combines an approach of short-term, post-crisis relief and a long-term development approach. It rightly proposes to focus on interventions in the Maradi region and to extend the beneficiary-targeting approach to the entire region with respect to the enhancement of local know-how and innovation, but it ignores the great potential that lies in developing a strategic partnership with the decentralized technical services.

The strategic objectives of the COSOPs correspond by and large to those of the project portfolio. The objectives to improve natural resource management, secure and intensify agricultural production, and improve and diversify sources of income have been partly achieved, particularly through the promotion of assisted natural regeneration, soil and water conservation measures, small irrigation projects, and the promotion of income-generating activities for women. Community organization was encouraged by building the capacity of different organizations, although they did not become very self-sufficient outside the projects. The objective of limiting the impact of the food crisis was achieved on the local scale, thanks to the installation of village warehouses and, on a larger scale, with the preparation of a national cereal bank management strategy. However, the objectives to improve access by the rural population to financial services and to develop social and economic infrastructure were generally not attained. Thus, the performance of the COSOPs was moderately satisfactory.

Assessment of the overall partnership between IFAD and the Government. Based on portfolio performance, non-lending activities, and the COSOPs, the overall partnership between IFAD and the Government has been moderately satisfactory. The following table summarizes the scores given by the CPE to the different evaluation criteria.

Summary of the CPE Appraisal of Niger

a)   The scores are: 1=very unsatisfactory; 2=unsatisfactory; 3=moderately unsatisfactory; 4=moderately satisfactory; 5=satisfactory; and 6=very satisfactory

Recommendations

In view of the preparation of a new COSOP for Niger, the CPE makes the following four strategic recommendations: (i) continue to target interventions to the Maradi region, by strengthening the capacity of local institutions and by supporting diversification of the income of the rural poor; (ii) promote the adoption of a programme approach in the Maradi region by supporting the development of the regional rural development strategy for Maradi ensuring that IFAD interventions in the region are aligned with that strategy; (iii) make full use of non-lending activities (partnerships, knowledge management, and policy dialogue) to encourage innovation and scaling up; and (iv) make adjustments to IFAD's operating model to adapt it to the particular context in Niger.

Recommendation 1. Focus the strategic priorities of IFAD's programme in Niger first on building institutional capacity and then on diversifying rural income, keeping the geographic focus on the Maradi region. The ARRDI-ISC will build the capacity of communes and the decentralized technical services (particularly agropastoral organizations) to improve the structure and effectiveness of production chains. The next IFAD project financed through the 2010-2012 PBAS allocation should aim at diversifying sources of rural income, paying special attention to irrigated market gardening, livestock, and off-farm income-generating activities. The project should promote access by the rural poor to markets and the reinforcement of private services, taking a cross-cutting approach based on partnerships.

Recommendation 2. Accelerate the transfer to a programme approach integrated with the rural development strategy for the Maradi region. This involves supporting the process of regionalising the rural development strategy for Maradi, as the Government would like to see, and fully integrating IFAD's financial interventions with the regional strategy, which will then constitute the "programme" which the Government would control. The process of developing the new COSOP and, in particular all the analyses that will support it, should be used to provide the Government and the technical and financial partners operating in the region with a deeper understanding of local constraints and opportunities in rural development. The strategic guidelines and procedures for implementing IFAD's new COSOP should be defined jointly with the national and regional governments and the technical and financial partners active in the Maradi region. The new COSOP should make provision for non-lending activities to assist the local partners (Government and civil society) in preparing the regional rural development strategy for Maradi, and to support coordination of its implementation, and its monitoring and evaluation.

Recommendation 3. Continue to promote innovation and its scaling up in order to contribute to the diversification of the income of the rural poor. The fields in which IFAD has built up some experience in Niger and for which it is necessary to find innovative solutions are primarily natural resource management, small-scale irrigation, access to land, access to markets, and strengthening the means of action of marginalized social groups, particularly women. Other pertinent fields undoubtedly merit greater attention, such as sedentary livestock raising and off-farm activities. IFAD and the Government should make full use of the experience of the beneficiary-targeting approach with regard to the identification and promotion of innovations in the rural areas without, however, neglecting to capitalize on innovations and their scaling up beyond the projects and the Maradi region. To that end, the new COSOP should develop a realistic strategy to promote the up scaling of innovations produced from interventions in the field, making full use of non-lending activities.

Recommendation 4. Adapt IFAD's operating model to Niger's particular context, given that the country faces virtually all the difficulties experienced by the poorest countries. Given the wide differences in the capacity of public and private service providers in Niger in the technical and managerial fields, partners for project implementation should be chosen more selectively, based on their capacity, and adequate technical assistance should be provided destined to be phased out over time. It is also necessary to seek simplicity in project objectives and activities, given the implementation capacity of the partners which should, however, gradually increase. Also, in view of the often unforeseeable nature of developments in Niger, sufficient flexibility must be built into the design of interventions so they can be adapted in function of how the situation evolves. Supervision and support for implementing the activities financed should be further strengthened with enhanced participation by IFAD, the Government, and the other partners involved. The length and frequency of supervision missions should be increased and lending agencies with international standing should be called upon to provide regular technical assistance commensurate with needs.