Lessons learned from AID program experience in FY 1984 : a review of the year"s project evaluation and audit reports, world-wide

The evaluations and audit reports focused on five issues: compatibility with the host country environment; institutional and human resources development; design and implementation problems; sustainability; and technology transfer. Key findings are as follows. (1) Most projects have been responsive to host government, country development, and U.S. needs. However, some have been incompatible with cultural and ethnic factors (factors sometimes unseen even by host governments); thus projects with national scope may be ineffective in important geocultural regions of a country. (2) Institution building is widely viewed by USAID Mission personnel and increasingly by contractors as A.I.D."s core function, and A.I.D. staff have become skilled in strengthening host country capabilities. (3) Project design and monitoring systems are highly professional and in many respects effective, but have impeded both full realization of institution building and timely goal achievement; management and administrative problems from overall direction to logistics and finance have impeded project objectives. (4) Sustainability has been inadequately emphasized. (5) The effectiveness of technology transfer has been mixed. Agriculture has posed the most serious problem, as many projects to raise small farm productivity are falling short of goals, in most cases because input delivery systems have not reached the great majority of rural families, but in some cases because farmers have rejected the new technologies. Delivery capabilities, technology acceptance, and community participation have been greater in health projects, but securing an acceptance of preventive medicine equivalent to that of curative services has proven difficult. Also, in each case where the installation of potable water systems was successfully achieved, water consumption failed to increase. In a number of countries, family planning is enjoying levels of acceptance and participation similar to primary health services. Despite the superiority of new fuel-efficient stoves over traditional models, the new stoves have not yet been accepted, especially in African countries. Employment generation has not resulted from rural regional agro-industrial projects as expected.