Technologies for the rural poor project : findings and recommendations of AID/DNES evaluation team

Special evaluation, focusing on four renewable energy subprojects (SP's), covers the period 8/78-12/84 and is based on site visits, document review, and interviews with project, USAID/I, and public and private sector host country personnel. The project has fostered genuine technology transfer between U.S. and Indian scientific and academic institutions, established long-term institutional relationships promising for future technological progress, and assisted significantly in establishing Indian centers of expertise in several areas of renewable energy research and utilization (particularly in solar drying work at Annamalai University and high-temperature solar thermal design at Bharat Heavy Electrical Ltd). However, only the solar rice drying system is ready for widespread testing and dissemination; the other 3 SP's (village solar thermal energy; line-focus solar concentrators; and micro-hydro and hybrid systems) are seriously behind and will require an additional 9-24 months for field testing to be completed. A 2-year project delay resulting from problems with SP approval crucially affected some SP's, as research priorities under the Reagan Administration have deemphasized renewable energy technology. (Project design also assumed an international price of crude oil reaching $40/bl). The project suffered from divergence between its implementation as a scientific exchange/scholarly research activity and its stated purpose to develop technologies for the rural poor: the quality of research has been high and the technologies developed sound, but several are too expensive and complex for remote site operation and maintenance - selected apparently for their scientific interest rather than relevance to cost-effective rural development - and the absence of technically competent USAID/I supervision allowed inappropriate projects to continue. The choice of universities and national laboratories as U.S. collaborators has exacerbated the high-performance emphasis; testing has been held up by the slow performance of some U.S. collaborators and the great difficulty experienced by some SP's in procuring U.S. parts. Recommendations for follow-on activities are included.