Agricultural development support program, 279-0052 : project assistance completion report

The ADSP, most of which was phased out in early 1991 as a result of the Gulf War, included five subprojects (SP's): the Core SP; Agricultural Education and Development (AEDS); Poultry Extension and Training (PETS); Horticulture Improvement and Training (HITS); and Faculty of Agriculture (FOA). Due to the war, the Core and FOA SP's had to be terminated prematurely; the others were more or less completed by that time. Planned outputs were generally met for all SP's, which is commendable considering the program's difficult working conditions and the need to deal with slowly reacting bureaucracies. However, accomplishments fell short in most cases of full sustainability and institutionalization. The most critical problems were lack of strong management skills and adequate funding within the various Ministries. On the bright side, a major accomplishment, from both technical and political viewpoints, was U.S. degree (or higher) training of 95 persons. Returned participants have not been fully integrated into Yemen's agricultural management system, but all express a desire to keep lines of communication to the United States open. General lessons from the program are three. (1) Adequate operating and maintenance budgets for facilities and equipment must be established and kept up from the beginning. (2) The umbrella concept and central management model were effective in theory, but roles and responsibilities should have been better defined. (3) If U.S. equipment must be used, a system for assuring a spare parts' supply must be in place. Lessons from the SP's include the following. (1) Core -- Institution building requires: (a) a contractor with long experience in this activity, a commitment to continuity of staffing, and some bilingual capacity, and (b) performance benchmarks, a socioculturally sensitive monitoring system, and financial controls that limit spending on unsustainable activities. (2) AEDS -- U.S. training of Yemeni teachers would have been more effective at lower cost than was Egyptian training; Yemen's curriculum approval process was not fully considered during SP design; the World Bank's standard secondary school design requires extensive adaptation for secondary agricultural schools. (3) PETS -- SP design did not focus sufficiently on economic policies; participant training was begun without designating which jobs returned participants would fill. (4) HITS -- SP management had many shortcomings; roles and responsibilities for institutionalization were ill-defined; USAID was understaffed. Also, a Yemeni quarantine department is urgently needed; citrus production cannot be expanded until major diseases are controlled; and ways to increase water use efficiency must be fully assessed. (5) FOA -- water availability must be carefully assessed, not assumed. Although USAID/Y has been directed by the State Department to disengage from agricultural activities, the Mission, having invested $106 million in the program, should make every attempt to encourage the involved ministries to assure sustainability by implementing the evaluation's key recommendations. The most important of these are to: provide adequate funding for facilities and equipment; assign returning participants to challenging positions where they can use their new knowledge and skills; formally approve the curricula developed under AEDS; and make plant protection programs developed under the program fully operational. The Mission has decided that the 44 participants already in training should be allowed to finish their degrees.