Mid-term evaluation of the small farmer agribusiness development project

Mid-term evaluation covers the period 6/92-11/95. Despite severe initial delays, the project is having a positive impact on production, employment, foreign exchange, and value-added processing. However, most participating service-oriented FOBs will not register much impact on these indicators during the project's duration, except for processing. At best, PACD indicator values will reach $5 million for foreign exchange and $5 million for value-added. The EOPS indicators are too ambitious and should be modified to reflect the project's implementation capability and limits. FINACOOP's administrative restructuring program is being managed under the guidelines set out in the Project Agreement, but could be improved in two important areas. First, because FINACOOP has never established clear objectives for the development of participating groups, it is not clear when they can graduate from the restructuring program. Second, more attention must be given to management education. Additionally, the project's training program lacks the appropriate agribusiness perspective. Training should focus on financial management for upper-level FINACOOP managers and entrepreneurial skills for those implementing FINACOOP's grassroots strategy with participating groups and their members. There should be equal access for men and women to both kinds of training. Several types of tangible FOB service improvements are being provided, such as better quality, availability, and accurate weights of inputs at the retail level, stabilization of inputs price levels through volume purchases, a transparent process to establish produce market value, and higher market prices. Further benefits can accrue to members if the FOBs can offer value-added processing and export marketing, but these activities are more complex and require much higher levels of capitalization and membership commitment to ensure success. The total number of FOB members in FINACOOP's program is about 4,400, but FOBs have broader influence than these numbers suggest. FOBs are active with input services in townships with 56,627 farms and marketing services in townships with 55,775 farming units. FINACOOP expects the program to reach 40 or more FOBs by the project's end. Lessons learned include the following. (1) Progress benchmarks and indicators should be related to factors that can be affected by project implementors and be as independent as possible from exogenous variables. (2) A no-nonsense, disciplined approach to rural development based on the principle of self-help with clear implementation responsibilities and supported by an effective, timely information system for monitoring, is indispensable for success. (3) A highly detailed project design which defines implementation procedures with great precision can itself become a hindrance to effective implementation if the circumstances under which a project is carried out change substantially. (4) A human resource development program contributes to project success when it is initiated early enough to allow new skills and attitudes to be applied during the project. New management at FINACOOP initiated an ambitious training program midway into the project, but its impact will be severely hampered because of delays.