Mid-term evaluation of the cooperative agreement (ATI-III) between Appropriate Technology International and the U. S. Agency for International Development

Evaluation covers the period through 12/92. ATI was conceived inside A.I.D. with ideas and encouragement from the U.S. Congress and the broader development community. It was intended to be an experimental agent of U.S. development assistance, and to play a complementary role to A.I.D. as well as be a source of learning for it. It was designed to be enterprise oriented, opportunity responsive, flexible, entrepreneurial and timely. It would target populations most difficult for government bureaucracies to reach and use a modus operandi least characteristic of such organizations. ATI has remained loyal to this vision through the years and has earned respect and appreciation among those who have been closest to its work in the field. More importantly, it is emerging from an intense period of transformation from a grant-making institution to a facilitator and provider of strategic assistance. Over the past 15 years, it has had an average annual budget of $4 million in A.I.D. funds, with changing degrees of flexibility in the use of these funds. Recent successes in diversifying project funding have resulted in a five fold increase in non-A.I.D. funding. Since 1990, ATI projects have received support from 16 sources, including 5 A.I.D. Missions. While the goals of ATI have changed little during this period; its objectives, methods, staff, and vocabulary have been constantly evolving. Recent focus on larger groups of beneficiaries and its newly articulated subsector approach are impressive and enhance ATI's comparative advantage. That advantage is based on its widely recognized technical competence in selected hard technologies, analytical skills, its ability to introduce new technologies, and its complementary soft technology concerns such as credit, business planning, and marketing. The evaluation includes a wide variety of findings. (1) ATI's mission is highly relevant and its strategies are significant, effectively pursued, and have a high potential for impact on a greatly increased numbers of beneficiaries. This view was amply supported by USAID Missions, other donors, local partners, and beneficiaries in the four countries visited during this assessment. (2) The ATI-III cooperative agreement is increasingly irrelevant. It needs to be totally rewritten to define terms, reconcile inconsistencies, recognize the legitimacy of current categories of leveraging funds from other donors, substitute realistic funding targets in these leveraging categories, establish more relevant indicators, and initiate new methods for facilitating sustainability and diversified funding. (3) A.I.D. should accept ATI as a complement to A.I.D. rather than exclusively as an agent of A.I.D.'s changing agendas. ATI should be funded from the top of the A.I.D. budget rather than from the budget of only one bureau with its own priorities and evaluative criteria. It also implies that ATI should be viewed and utilized as an opportunity for flexible and innovative activities leading to mutual learning from experimentation. This in turn suggests institutionalizing a collaborative relationship between the leaders of the two organizations. (4) There is within ATI a tendency to undervalue its significant contributions and the alternative styles which it manifests. For example, the feedback loops from its own experience in implementing projects through adaptive, iterative, processes are not well incorporated in its own literature. Also there is less involvement of other organizations in its analytical and planning activities than those organizations might desire. Few research institutions have the grassroots experience of ATI and could benefit from more involvement while complementing ATI's skills. Another example is that ATI's own capability statements focus on the primary producers while, in fact, a major contribution is also being made by its innovative work with intermediary producers of equipment to be used by the primary producers. (5) Areas for improvement include: moving to an overall management system which would better support the direction ATI is headed by integrating reporting, monitoring, and evaluation activities; budgeting improvements; improving reporting and monitoring of time allocation of all staff members in order to better communicate costs of operations and to make management tradeoffs; strengthening field/central office integration and mutual learning, and increasing field presence as resources permit. (6) This report recognizes the importance of on-going government funding, and it suggests the need for greatly increased resources. Suggestions include allowing ATI to be an "investor" capable of earning a return on some of its activities, and to open its own credit facility in support of its local partners and in order to recover some of its capital needs. (7) Additional collaboration with other development organizations may have particular usefulness in expanding policy and environmental analysis in project development. It may also open new revenue sources. Having time for this may require narrowing ATI's focus among subsectors, within a program, or geographically. (8) ATI has shown an awareness of the changes needed in personal and corporate operating styles as project activities move from ATI-II such as demonstration projects to countrywide and regional programs. (9) Local capacity building remains a central requirement of any development activity and ATI has new opportunities to bring local organizations along with it in its subsector approach. This observation will reverse the guidance provided by the 1982 A.I.D. evaluation to move away from local capacity building and emphasize commercialization of technologies through enterprise development. ATI's success with indirect funding and instrumental leveraging reflects its continued concern about local capacity building even if it was deemphasized during ATI-II. (Author abstract)