Methods of selecting, designing and evaluating food aid projects

A review of the life cycle of WFP food aid projects and of current project criteria and evaluation instruments reveals that: (1) WFP should select and design projects on the basis of a wide portfolio, not just in response to isolated requests. (2) WFP should, more than other agencies, evaluate projects in humanitarian rather than economic terms. Anent this, the report indicates ways to improve the collection of data on beneficiaries. (3) Although WFP"s stress on major interim evaluations gives it superior flexibility in project redesign, it should pay more attention to monitoring project activities from the beginning; examples of the types of information involved and ways of presenting it are discussed. (4) WFP evaluations should highlight important points about program coverage and the targeting of the malnourished, and greater use should be made of recipient country reporting systems, e.g., Botswana"s nutritional surveillance system (discussed in detail). (5) In place of high cost impact evaluations for all its projects, WFP should centrally fund a series of case studies of major types of projects in representative countries. (6) To identify possible negative effects of food aid at the macro level, WFP should rely on periodic country reviews, preferably conducted in cooperation with other donors. Appended are a list of steps in cross-sectional evaluation, an impact evaluation, and a 20-item bibliography (1976-84).