United Nations Capital Development Fund

2000 Project Evaluation Results
Prepared by the UNCDF Evaluation Unit

Burkina Faso

I. Basic Project Data

Project Number:	BKF/85/C05 - BKF/87/013
Type of Evaluation:	Final
Project Title:	Production and Ancillary Measures in Namenga Province (PAPANAM)
UN Cooperating Organization:	UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Government Executing Agency:	Ministry of Agriculture (formerly Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources)
Sector:
Sub-sector:
Date Project Approved:	18 February 1993
Date Project Began:	4 January 1994
Date Project Ended:	31 December 1999
Date Project Evaluated:	March 2000
UNCDF Budget:	US$ 4,573,725
UNDP Budget:	1,992,595
Gov't. Budget:	548,528
Total Budget:	US $ 7,114,848
Actual UNCDF expenditures at time of evaluation:	$4,038,332

II. Background

Located on the central Mossi plateau, Namentenga is the poorest and most cut-off province in the country, and the one with the least infrastructure. It is subject to erosion of the soil, to diminishing fertility and to desertification owing to the Sahel droughts and to the shortening of the fallow periods. There are large-scale migrations of people out of the province. The extremely high rate of illiteracy (97%) impedes capacity-building initiatives. The local administrative authorities are all appointed by the central government, and the deconcentrated Government departments suffer from a lack of human and material resources.

Since 1997, the national legislation has incorporated the "land management" (gestion de terroir [GT]) approach, based on the participation of the rural communities in the management of natural resources, and has made provision for creation of village structures for coordination of rural development, the Village Land Management Committees (Commissions Villageoises de Gestion de Terroir [CVGT]).

III. The Project

The project has been slow and difficult to bring to fruition. Originally (1985-86) designed as an integrated development project, it was redirected towards a land management [GT] approach at the beginning of the 1990s and did not start up its activities until 1994. The geographical scale of the project was reduced from three provinces to one. The target figures of the project were slightly reduced and working capital was withdrawn in order to be used instead on project RAF/94/C01 dealing with local credit arrangements.

The project was being executed by national bodies, under the Provincial Agriculture Service (Service Provincial de l'Agriculture [SPA]) in Boulsa. It had been envisaged that most of the deconcentrated technical services would take part in its implementation and that companies from within the country would build the water-control infrastructure.

Development Objectives

To assist in the achievement of food self-sufficiency and in an improvement in the living and nutritional conditions of the population by increasing production and making it more reliable.

Immediate Objectives

To reduce the vulnerability of agricultural production to the vagaries of climate, by means of a better control of water.
To slow down the process of environmental degradation and to increase agricultural productivity by establishing anti-erosion sites.
To increase the productive capacity of the farmers.
To provide the farmers with the best possible return on their work, by providing access to storage facilities.

Expected Results

Construction/renovation of four small dams and the development of 60 ha of irrigated land,
Improvement and development of 45 ha of bottomland,
Establishment of 45 ha of small market-gardening plots,
Anti-erosion measures on 2,640 ha,
Construction or renovation of 7 training centres,
Construction of 18 grain stores,
Literacy and crop-growing training for the farmers,
Provision of loans to permit the procurement of inputs and equipment,
Strengthening of the provincial development structures.

In all, the project was intended to benefit 1,000 families from the point of view of intensive irrigated crop-farming (300 by way of the dams, 200 by way of the bottomlands and 500 by way of women drawing benefit from the market-gardening plots) and 880 families from the point of view of water and soil conservation.

IV. Purpose of the Evaluation

To identify the successes and failures of the project;
To identify the means of ensuring sustainability of the project and to determine responsibilities for that, in the form of recommendations;
To draw lessons which will be useful for the formulation or implementation of similar projects, in particular for the PAPNA project which will follow the current one.

V. Findings of the Evaluation

a. Assessment of results achieved

Approach: The project was well managed and worked in close cooperation with the deconcentrated technical services. It suffered from delays in the delivery of imported equipment and also in the work of the companies working as sub-contractors. It had an impact on 22 villages of the southern part of the Namentenga province, following a participatory planning and evaluation procedure which seems to have been very successful. The contribution of the beneficiary populations to the performance of the work, estimated at 261,500 person-days of work, is four times as high as had been estimated in the project document.

The project resulted in the creation of "village bodies", foreshadowing the CVGTs and bringing together representatives of the administrative, customary and religious hierarchies as well as marginalized groups and associations. Unfortunately, these bodies have remained rather detached and have not been very dynamic. It has not proved possible to divide up the land, owing to the conflicts that that might have caused.

Dams: Of the four dams planned, one was abandoned for budgetary reasons (underestimate of the costs and devaluation of the CFA franc). Two were concluded in 1997 and now supply water to the improved plots in Dargo (renovation, 17 ha) and Bonam (construction, 16 ha). At the time of the evaluation, the last dam (Yaongo, 15 ha) was under construction, due to be finished in April 2000. Development of the land below it was to be concluded in June 2000, despite a failure of the company which had won the bid and its partial placement under official control. At the end of the project the rate of execution of the dams was expected to be 80% (48 ha out of the 60 originally planned).

The dams are constructed of compacted earth and incorporate a protective spillway and an intake made of concrete. The volumes of water available and the distribution mechanisms are in accordance with the plans. The irrigated areas are used to grow rice during the rainy winter season, with very encouraging yields (6 t/ha), and rice or market-garden crops during the dry season.

The less successful aspects include the allocation of the plots of land, which benefited men and to the detriment of women; the lack of outlets for market-garden crops; the inadequacies of the management committees and of the maintenance work; and the risk of salinization of the soil, which cannot be avoided unless sufficient mineral fertilizer is applied.

Bottomlands: The Boulsa bottomland area (5 ha) was completed and has been planted with rice since 1999. It appears to give satisfactory results. The yields are excellent. The construction of the second bottomland area (Lillougou, 8.5 ha) was still in progress and advancing only very slowly at the time of the evaluation. The rate of execution of the bottomlands would thus probably be 30% (13.5 ha out of the 45 planned) by the end of the project. UNCDF approved the implementation of these two bottomland areas only at a very late date, namely in 1998.

Small market-gardening plots: Nine have been established and 16 were in progress at the time of evaluation, giving a rate of execution of 55% (25 out of the 45 planned). The budget was not sufficient to implement the other plots because it had proved necessary to dig the wells deeper, and thus at greater cost, than had been envisaged. Each market-gardening plot contains four wells, allowing manual irrigation of the 1 ha cultivated by about a hundred women, the beneficiaries of the project. The latter stressed the contribution to their nutritional supply of the crops grown but also described the drying up of some of the wells in the dry season and the difficulties of getting water out. Manual pumps have been installed as an experiment at four sites. It may be noted that "clandestine" vegetable gardens flourish at the edges of the plots and bottomland areas developed under the project.

Anti-erosion measures: 2,695 ha have been covered as against 2.640 planned, an execution rate of 102%. The measures consist of lines of stones following the contours and backed up by planting Andropogon gayanus and Acacia nilotica. The latter species appears not to have survived well. The anti-erosion structures are much appreciated by the farmers, who put some 190,000 person-hours of work into them, amounting to three-quarters of the total community contribution. The project has demonstrated a very clear effect on the fertility and the yields of the rainwater-fed fields which have been developed. The farmers reported that the technique even makes it possible to revive some land which had become barren owing to excessive erosion.

Training and literacy: In response to a strong demand, 17 training, outreach and meeting centres were constructed, as against 7 planned (a rate of execution of 243%). The project contributed to an increase in the literacy of the province: 2,000 people (about half of them women) attended a first course of functional literacy in the Moré language and 400 attended a second course. A significant effort was made to train the village bodies and farmers' groups (25,000 person-days in total), but this suffered from a lack of depth, particularly with regard to the maintenance of the infrastructure projects. The rates of absorption of the technical subjects imparted vary between 28% and 81%. The project personnel, the officials of the SPA and the partners also received considerable quantities of training (1,500 person-days).

Access to credit: The working capital initially intended for the farmers and the grain stores was eliminated and used instead to support the project RAF/94/C01 at the credit unions in Boulsa, Dargo and Zéguédéguin. But this support took some time to materialize and the terms set by the banks are prohibitive for the beneficiaries of the project. The problem of credit for the grain stores and the beneficiary farmers has not been resolved.

Other work completed:

8 grain stores constructed and 10 in progress.
7 bodies of water stocked with fish and training provided to 210 potential fishermen and 136 fish-smokers. However, the equipment for them still has to be funded.
Nutrition: systematic monitoring of the nutrition of the children from the project area and establishment of a small-scale facility for production of MISOLA, a flour making use of local products and intended for children and nursing mothers.
12 boreholes not completed at the time of the evaluation, of which it is hoped that 8 will be positive.

b. Assessment of project design

The objectives of the project are clear and the approach well thought-out. But having been initially designed as an integrated rural development project and then redirected towards the land management approach, the project has retained traces of its original design. The investments were laid down and described in detail in the project document, which meant that for a long time the project was unable to respond to the fact that the communities assigned high priority to the installation of drinking water supply points. Only at a late date did UNCDF release the funds to permit a few boreholes to be drilled. Additionally, the project had to deal with underestimates of the costs of some of the infrastructure work.

The PAPANAM project, concluded at the end of 2000, was essentially focused on agricultural development. However, agricultural activity is probably of marginal importance by comparison with stock-breeding in the province. The PAPNA project (project BKF/97/C02 - Development of Agropastoral Resources in Namentenga), which is shortly to take over from the PAPANAM project, will be more concerned with stock-breeding in the northern part of the province.

VI. Recommendations

The evaluation mission made numerous recommendations, primarily directed towards ensuring sustainability of the work performed under the PAPANAM project. The main ones were as follows:

Preparation of a small project, for US$ 150,000, administered by the PAPNA, to fund the translation into the Moré language of the manual on the maintenance of the plots of land, and also to fund the guarantee advances demanded by the credit unions (20 to 25% of the amount of the loan) for purchases of fertilizer by the farmers and the equipment for the fishermen and fish-smokers.
Allocation of a part of the Land Development Fund (Fonds de Développement des Terroirs) of the future PAPNA project to the southern part of the province.
Continuation of the follow-up and ancillary actions of the technical services, and dissemination of knowledge in particular, and incorporation of the plots and the bottomland areas into FAO's SPFS.
Authorisation given to the SPA to use the worksites and the hardware of the project up until it is transferred to the PAPNA project once the latter becomes operational.

VII. Policy Implications and Lessons Learned

There is the risk that an investment as large as that represented by the PAPANAM and PAPNA projects to benefit a relatively small portion of the population (22 villages under the PAPANAM project and 50 planned for the PAPNA project, out of the 145 that there are in the province) could engender distortions and breakdowns in social cohesion. The inequalities that this will entail should be assessed, and ways of providing benefits to more villages should be identified.

VIII. Evaluation Team

The evaluation was carried out by:

Michel Gutelman, Team Leader, representing UNDP
François Job Jean-Jacques, representing UNCDF
Maurice Thiombiano, representing the Government of Burkina Faso.