Final evaluation of the TechnoServe grant

to strengthen the organization"s institutional and operational capabilities. TechnoServe has achieved its goals of providing improved and expanded TA to an increased number of small- and medium-sized rural and community-based enterprises (CBEs) in Africa and Latin America, and has assisted larger numbers of the rural poor to participate in viable and sustainable enterprise. This has been achieved in part by strengthening TechnoServe"s internal institutional structure, its network of external relations, and by supporting new country and program expansion, as envisioned in the grant. TechnoServe"s success derives from the technical soundness of its CBE approach, which emphasizes local solutions and community participation while fostering productivity and the creation of wealth, and its capacity to adapt the CBE model to local country conditions. Despite these successes, there is need for greater emphasis on: building a "critical mass" of institutional capacity in a selected number of country programs, the addition of advanced support services, developing exit strategies and retaining the fee-for-service principle, and paying greater attention to adult training methodologies. TechnoServe is approaching a critical transition period and needs to settle a number of internal and external challenges of an institutional and programmatic nature. Cutting across both sets of challenges is the need to strengthen TechnoServe"s analytical and self-learning capacity both at Norwalk and in the field. Institutional challenges include: effectively managing TechnoServe"s first executive transition; broadening and deepening the base of financial support; and designing a better structure of relationships and communications between the headquarters and field offices, with emphasis on strengthening the support role of headquarters. Programmatically, TechnoServe needs to ensure that its CBE approach reflects the trends and market conditions of the 1990s. This will require a greater degree of freedom and openness to experimentation, a more active approach to strengthening autonomy and fostering independence, and a strengthened institutional capacity to learn from experience. While there is considerable debate within TechnoServe about the need for experimentation and change, the climate in which this debate occurs is sometimes dysfunctional. TechnoServe needs to structure a process that will bring alternative views on the table for discussion and to examine new proposals analytically and objectively. It is especially important for senior country program directors to feel there is a climate responsive to constructive change. Also, despite the sound reasons for the slow progress made to date in fostering greater independence in its country programs and the costliness of a premature graduation or exit strategy, TechnoServe should continue to develop ways to promote this independence in order to make the matching grant vision of a strengthened TechnoServe network a reality. TechnoServe is currently in the process of completing and formally adopting a strategic plan that will provide policy direction during the critical executive transition period. Many of the concerns raised in this evaluation are addressed in that document and the findings and recommendations are largely consistent with the material set forth in this evaluation.