Project Evaluation Summaries
Prepared by the Policy, Planning and Evaluation Unit (PPEU)

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Uganda

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I. Basic Project Data

Project Number:	UGA/91/C01
Project Title:	Karamoja Pilot Development Project
UN Cooperating Agency:	UNDP, UNIDO
Government Executing Agency:	National Execution Unit of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning
National Implementer:	Church of Uganda, Kotido Diocese
Sector:	Agriculture & Livestock Development Support
Sub-Sector:	Agriculture and Integrated Rural Development
UNCDF Budget:	US$     200,000
UNDP Budget:	190,000
Total Budget:	390,000
UNCDF Expenditures at Evaluation:	176,000
Date Project Approved:	Nov 1993
Date Project Began:	23 Feb 1994
Date Project Completed:	May 1995
Date Project Evaluated:	Jan 1996
Type of Evaluation:	Final / Pilot

II. Background

The northeast district of Karamoja is Uganda's most underdeveloped region. Traditional practices of cattle-raiding have escalated and grown more dangerous through the proliferation of automatic weapons. Guns have actually become a key local commodity, acquiring a value measured in cattle equivalents.

This project's district includes three counties, each named for its primary ethnic group, although there are other ethnic groups in the district. The Jie, in the middle county, have become very well-armed; they are the main source of cattle raids. The Dodoth, to the north, are impinged by the Jie on one side and a national park on the other. The result of both these factors has been tremendous losses to their economic base. To the south, the Labwar have also lost many cattle to the raids, but pursue a more mixed economy. Turkana from northern Kenya also raid the area, and have depopulated the district's eastern zone. The area to the west of the district, also subject to Jie raiding, has had its potential cash-crop economy seriously destabilized. Protection concerns among local people have led to settlement clustering, increasing productive pressures on nearby lands that have become overgrazed. However, since the project's identification the security situation has improved, in part through the mobilization of local militia by the Government.

The Government has prioritized the district's social and economic development, establishing a special ministry and a development agency for the region, as well as assigning some armed local groups the role of militia. The Government of Uganda (GOU) requested international assistance for the region's development within an increasingly secure environment, leading to UNCDF identification of an integrated development project.

III. The Project

A three-year project was identified in 1990 along with three others in the West Nile region. Because of the need to test basic project hypotheses, an 18-month pilot for the project was formulated in 1992 with the assistance of the FAO Investment Centre. This phase included 11 micro-projects for water supply, schools, health clinics, and other interventions. It ended in November 1995.

Objectives

The primary development objectives for the pilot project were poverty alleviation, physical stabilization of the local population, and improved natural resource management. Immediate objectives for the pilot phase were to involve the local communities in needs identification; to undertake a baseline study; to train village-based groups in planning for inputs; to assess the potential for a credit component; to identify key issues for a revised project document for project extension based on the pilot experience; and to assess the possibility of later inclusion of a credit component at the project stage.

IV. Purpose of the Evaluation

The goals of the evaluation mission were to evaluate the pilot project in terms of design, performance, and potential future impact; to make recommendations on continuation of the project on a larger scale; and to undertake a preliminary assessment of local institutions as groundwork to formulate a subsequent, expanded project phase.

V. Findings of the Evaluation

A. Assessment of the Results Achieved

The pilot project's main achievement was the testing of key aspects of community participation approaches to the provision of micro-project infrastructure. Identification, design, and labour-intensive implementation stages were satisfactory in eight of 11 micro-projects.

Micro-project outputs

Of 11 planned micro-projects, nine were completed, including classrooms, clinics, and domestic water provision. Of these, eight demonstrated reasonable success with approaches based in community participation. Most micro-projects still required movable equipment or minor finishing to make them operational at the time of the mission, and additional training of some maintenance technicians was required. Two techniques utilized for supplying domes

tic water were to rehabilitate or drill boreholes operated by hand pumps, and to catch rainwater from the roofs of buildings constructed by the project. Five boreholes were drilled, with three yielding adequate potable water, but no chemical testing of the water conforming to WHO standards had occurred.

Implementation

The project faced delays in staff recruitment, materials procurement, and borehole drilling, although this was to be expected in a remote and under-serviced area. Community-level participatory training and construction activities were satisfactorily implemented by the responsible agency, the Church of Uganda's Karamoja Diocese Development Office (UKKDO).

Pilot relevance

Because the pilot was limited to social service activities (classrooms, clinics, water pumping, etc.) no testing was done for the planned income-producing activities, or for livestock watering strategies. This makes the specific derivation of lessons from the project difficult. There was also evidence of an emerging food-aid dependency in the area, which could undermine local economic potential for income-producing activities. The mission determined that baseline data collections were too limited to be substantively relevant to a larger project, given the restricted range of pilot project activities and the seasonal absence of most men from the villages at the time of the mission due to herding.

Institutional capacity

The UKDDO has performed reasonably well during the implementation of the pilot phase, given the limited and small-scale nature of the pilot and has demonstrated its ability to manage many aspects of the upscaled project planned for the region, despite some shortcomings in business finance and microeconomics. Its capacity to implement a large-scale development project has not been tested and it is questionable whether current staff have the capacity to implement a full-fledged main phase.

Community participation

The project required three forms of testing: the ability of communities to mobilize for meetings; their ability to prioritize infrastructure micro-projects through a collective process; and their willingness to contribute labour and materials. Communities did meet together to determine priorities, elect committee members, and contribute local materials and unskilled labour to infrastructural micro-projects. However, because of the limited activities of the pilot and the lack of cash contribution requests, the sustainability of large-scale participatory micro-projects remains untested.

B. Assessment of Project Design

The pilot suffered from design limitations, some of which were inherent to its pilot status. It could not realistically test the capacity of NGOs, community forums, or government agencies to implement a full-scale project, given their limited time and responsibilities. Pilot

experience (mainly with fixed infrastructure) was limited to settled areas, and did not test the feasibility of planned inputs like fixed or mobile water provision sites for cattle to address the needs of semi-nomadic herders. Because the project was limited to social services (classrooms, clinics, domestic water pumps, etc.), it was also unable to test income-producing activities.

The pilot document did not clearly explain what was meant by testing the possibilities for "community participation." There were few clear requirements for beneficiary inputs, and this constrained the pilot's ability to determine the level of community interest, priorities, or ability to maintain specific components. The pilot did not address competing demands on resources from different communities, the linkages between micro-projects within the same communities, or the development of transparent strategies to address prioritisation. Each of these is likely to be an important issue in a larger project. Specific mission findings related to project design were as follows:

Health

Local commitment to maintain and use the clinics remains uncertain, and it may have been more appropriate to use entirely local materials and familiar architectural styles in facilities managed by local communities without external support.

Education

Of the two schools that were built, one was planned with minimal community contribution. As with the clinics, it would have been appropriate to sacrifice some design specifications in favour of increased community contributions; this would also be helpful in maximizing the use of scarce donor funds.

Water

A hydrologic specialist would have been helpful for both placement and supervision of the boreholes. For the roof catchment supply, it would have been advisable to collect water from both sides of the roofs of project-built facilities. The pilot did not test hypotheses related to the effects of secure water holes for cattle on transhuman land use.

Implementation arrangements

The Church of Uganda has shown that it can successfully implement micro-projects based in participatory design and development. However, it cannot be solely responsible for managing the upscaled project, requiring the identification of additional NGOs for local implementation. Further implementation arrangements involving the Districts and supporting GOU decentralization require additional review.

VI. Recommendations

The primary recommendation is to initiate the main phase of the project, extending its duration from three to four years with prorated contributions by donors. A formulation mission should be sent as soon as possible after the June 1996 national elections, and further testing of additional types of micro-projects and their financial sustainability should occur at the mid-term evaluation. UNCDF should provide $200,000 in special funding for the intermediate project stage, after the pilot and before the larger project can be started. During the full implementation, it is unlikely that the Church of Uganda will have the capacity to be the sole NGO counterpart for implementation. Instead, additional NGOs should be directly involved in local implementation.

Formulation of the full project should focus on identifying a wider range of functional activities, especially for income generation and productivity enhancements. It should also focus on designing procedures to assist community-selected capital formation strategies to achieve the key objectives of poverty alleviation and improved utilization of the resource base within appropriate geographic and administrative areas.

Project design should reflect the distinct needs of each population group, based on existing conditions and relative development potentials. Although the Jie are relatively more secure economically (and this security has been achieved to the direct detriment of other groups) continued efforts to stabilize the Jie population will have strong, positive effects on other groups within the district.

Boreholes to provide water for livestock should be more numerous and smaller than current plans, assisting sustainability goals, and cooperation in the siting of water points from the herders should be sought without conditionalities for operation and maintenance. Additional considerations in project design should be given to veterinary services, the integration of husbandry and cropping, medical supplies, and the assessment of cash crop potentials.

Lastly, the specific needs of women in the area, including those who have been widowed in the cattle raids, should be incorporated more fully. The role of food aid in the local economy should also be considered and accounted for as well as the likelihood of slow progress toward decentralization and any needed adjustments to project strategy that may be warranted.

VII. Policy Implications & Lessons Learned

Evaluations of pilot projects are limited by the capacity of the pilot to test larger assumptions. In cases where a pilot is planned to test the feasibility of large, multi-functional projects, it would be much better to conduct the evaluation on a larger scale and for a longer duration than was possible for this project. Otherwise, it is difficult to arrive at significant conclusions.

More attention should be given to the collection of data for monitoring and evaluation purposes, in particular related to processes based in "participatory" methods. In future, participatory rural appraisal survey methods should be utilized more extensively, including wealth rankings, social mapping, and information on farming systems, female-led households, local perceptions, and indigenous knowledge of the range and use of local resources. Such information is essential to each project team.

VIII. Evaluation Team

The mission took place in Uganda from 7-26 January 1996, with ten field days, and consisted of Deryke Belshaw, team leader and rural development economist; Sean Avery, Water resources engineer; Richard Hogg, social anthropologist; and Richard Obin, interpreter and gender specialist.