Final report : cooperative program support grant report (FAO-0192-A-00-5002-00) -- covering December 1, 1994-May 31, 1997 : National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA)

The project met or surpassed most of its objectives. In regard to its four main objectives, the project : signed 15 new and extended projects versus a target of 11; funded 2 new projects from non-USAID funds versus a target of 1; managed 25 projects versus a target of 14; and initiated projects in 4 new countries versus a target of 5. Furthermore, for every $1 of core grant money spent $15.54 in new and expanded projects was signed, bringing the total value of these types of projects to $21.755 million. Of the 28 proposals submitted, 15 were approved and 7 are still under consideration; NCBA usually has a high percentage of its proposals approved because of its staff knows the priorities of the countries and of the USAID Missions to which proposals are presented. NCBA/CLUSA continued, particularly in Africa, to expand its unique approach of relying on village-level decision making, intensive experiential training in business skills, and the linking of all training directly to business development. To this end, NCBA/CLUSA launched the Pan African Organization for Sustainable Development (POSDEV), which will play a major role in expanding the NCBA/CLUSA methodology further, and continued to nurture the development of indigenous cooperative development organizations that use the methodology. Major progress was made in adapting the methodology to the sectors of democracy and governance, community-based health programs, and natural resources management. For example, the expanded NCBA/CLUSA-assisted program in Mali, now under negotiation with USAID, addresses three Mission SOs: Sustainable Economic Growth, Youth, and Democratic Governance; a NCBA/CLUSA-assisted health cost recovery program in Burkina Faso, completed in 9/95, fostered the participation of 60,000 people from over 700 villages in the establishment of health committees that manage almost 70 government health clinics in two provinces; and in Benin NCBA/CLUSA began training indigenous personnel to manage a large national forest and continued work with 27 villages that support a national forest assisted earlier. The expanded use of the NCBA/CLUSA approach responds to the major economic, political, and social changes taking place in hundreds of villages and towns in developing countries were it has worked. In Mali and Niger alone, more than 750 rural group businesses and village associations have been trained to run profitable businesses. A critical component of NCBA/CLUSA support has been to help these businesses achieve the status of creditworthy customers in the eyes of local financial institutions. For example, in Niger, a self-sustaining intermediate credit service has used a guarantee fund to facilitate lending by three banks of about $1.5 million in 2 years to some 300 rural organizations; over 25% of the customers are women"s cooperatives -- the first ever loans made by banks to rural women in that country. In El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Indonesia, NCBA/CLUSA works with cooperatives and farmer associations to produce nontraditional agricultural export crops, many grown organically and marketed in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Finally, the Small and Microenterprise Project, assisted by NCBA/CLUSA in Egypt since 1990, now has four foundations, which by 9/96 had made over 105,000 loans to almost 50,000 clients with repayment averaging almost 100%. On the down side, NCBA/CLUSA did not develop an Africa intern program as called for because it could not guarantee prospective interns that they would find jobs in organizations that would use their new skills. Also, the development of the Africa-wide organization moved more slowly than had been hoped, and no new projects were developed in the areas of urban development or employee ownership. Finally, NCBA/CLUSA has not been able to attract major funding for projects from new donors; amounts provided the World Bank and IFAD for activities in Sao Tome and Benin have been relatively small.