Botswana private enterprise development project (BPED) : final report -- contract no. 623-0253-C-00-2014-00

The report covers the period 3/92-9/95. The project achieved significant results in the areas of policy formulation, management and entrepreneurial development, investment promotion, and financial sector development. Many important lessons were learned, including the following. (1) The advisors" role demanded not only advisory responsibilities, but day-to-day operational involvement in the departments and agencies where they were placed. While it is preferable for an advisor to have only counterpart, one advisor transferred skills to many counterparts, eventually stretching his responsibilities too thin to render adequate attention to all individuals and interests. (2) The project implementation team learned the importance of flexibility in a changing environment by dealing with the uncertainties caused by the a year-long transition to USAID"s phase-out from Botswana. The contractor did everything possible to ensure a smooth transition of the project to the Botswana Confederation of Commerce Industry and Manpower (BOCCIM) that is managing the project during its final year. (3) The opening of South Africa makes possible increased use of regional institutions for private sector development training; the improvements in the quality of training institutions in the region are admirable and should be taken advantage of. Customized training programs can be extremely beneficial since instructors can adapt the curricula to the local situation. (4) Institution building, in terms of organization, management, and financial self-sustainability, should be built into a project from the very beginning. While certain aspects of the project focused on capacity building at BOCCIM, for example, it was only during the last year of the project that a serious effort was made to ensure sustainability. (5) It was important to ensure that the project"s decision making framework adhered to a consensus-building methodology, given the cultural emphasis on consensus in Botswana. The project increased both its credibility and sustainability by utilizing a project implementation committee mechanism and altering it to increase individual and stakeholder participation and contributions through the use of reference groups, task forces, and committees (even though sometimes decision making took longer). (6) Use of an independent contractor helped to create a "neutral ground" in the project -- a context in which each host country entity could make its case with assurance of no special interests or conflicts of interest. Host country entities appreciated the Project Office as a neutral party that could ensure transparency and equity. (7) Finally, it would be useful to have a management information system (MIS) developed at the beginning of the project; this would allow baseline data to be more easily collected and make regular reporting less complicated. (Author abstract, modified)