Evaluation of Development Fund portfolio in Ethiopia

Background

The Norwegian non-governmental organisation (NGO), the Development Fund (DF), receives financial contributions from Norwegian development assistance through the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). These contributions have made up about 85% of the DF's total income in the past five years or so. The current framework agreement between NORAD/MFA and the DF covers the period 2003-06.
Over 40% of the Norwegian government funds allocated to the DF goes to programmes and projects in Ethiopia. For the period 2003-06 the portfolio of work supported by the DF in Ethiopia has an indicative budget of 68 million Norwegian kroner (NOK). This is mainly for activities in the DF's thematic programme area "Drylands", but the portfolio is guided by the principles of its other thematic programmes such as "Civil Society" and "Biodiversity in Agriculture".
The Norwegian aid administration has recently been restructured. In January 2005 the administrative and financial responsibility for the Norwegian government's support to the DF's work in Ethiopia was shifted from NORAD in Oslo to the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Addis Ababa, as part of a newly established arrangement for "strategic partnerships" between the MFA and its embassies, on one hand, and Norwegian development NGOs, on the other.
The DF portfolio in Ethiopia has evolved from supporting relief work by one Tigrayan organisation in the 1980s to supporting now ten projects with several organisations in
Tigray and Afar Regions and networking with other organisations in Ethiopia and beyond. The portfolio focuses on socio-economic development to alleviate poverty and increase food security, primarily through agriculture, and on natural resource management (NRM) in dryland areas, including maintenance of biodiversity. The DF is giving growing attention to strengthening civil society and pastoral livelihood development.

Purpose/objective

The main purpose was to assess the extent to which the DF's strategy and organisational structures and procedures are effective in reaching its development goals.
The team was asked to assess:
• the institutional and professional capacity of the DF office in Oslo and its interaction with other Norwegian organisations working in Ethiopia
• the achievements and performance of the DF's operations and programmes in Ethiopia
• the DF's planning processes and instruments; monitoring, evaluation and reporting systems; and funding mechanisms
• the partnership relations and cooperation with local and international NGOs, research and government institutions at various levels
• the DF's new strategy for Ethiopia for 2005-09 in relation to the United Nations Conventions on Combating Desertification (UNCCD) and on Biodiversity (CBD) and possible contributions of the DF to the Norwegian Action Plan for Support to Ethiopia's Agricultural Sector.

Methodology

The team reviewed documents pertaining to the DF and the projects it supports in Ethiopia. During 13 days of fieldwork in Ethiopia, the team met with staff of the Relief Society of Tigray (REST), the Women's Association of Tigray (WAT), the Afar Integrated Pastoral Development Programme and Voters?? Education Project coordinated by Mekelle University (MU), the Afar Pastoralist Development Association (APDA), FARM-Africa, the Norwegian Embassy and members of the Dryland Coordination Group (DCG) Ethiopia. The team visited some project sites in rural areas of Tigray and Afar Regions, where it spoke with project beneficiaries. It also met with people in other organisations and offices in Ethiopia involved in related research and development work. In Norway, the Norwegian team member met with staff of the DF, NORAD and Noragric at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, DCG Norway and some Ethiopian partner representatives currently in Norway.

Key findings

• The DF is reasonably well endowed in terms of institutional and professional capacity relevant to its Ethiopian portfolio
• All DF-supported projects are highly relevant to Tigray and Afar regional priorities, operating in drought-prone areas with poor, marginalised people
• On the whole, the resources provided through the DF have been used efficiently to achieve its objectives
• The DF-supported projects are rendering local people better able to manage their natural resources in a sustainable way, although the process of handing over responsibility to local communities could be speeded up
• The DF's participatory approach helps anchor projects in local communities
• A major weakness of the DF is its vulnerability to funding fluctuations and shocks
• The DF is broadening its range of partners to include NGOs in different ethnic and geographical contexts, focusing on dryland and civil-society development and seeking a balance between service delivery and advocacy for social change
• In absence of vibrant civil society in Afar Region, the DF's cautious approach of experimenting with local institutional development in a pilot district seems warranted

Recommendations

• The DF should focus on the environment-poverty nexus
• DF will need to deepen its expertise in pastoral development, decentralisation and governance, and the legal and social science aspects of the rights-based approach to development, and ally itself with external sources of relevant expertise
• As there seem to be differences between the DF and its partners in their understanding of some concepts, e.g. the rights-based approach, the DF should make more efforts to clarify these concepts jointly with partners within the local context
• The M&E systems of the DF and its partners include indicators to address environmental, economic, sociocultural and empowerment issues, but the validity of these indicators needs closer examination
• The DF and its partners should develop self-monitoring systems to examine the process of institution building, with the ultimate goal of self-reliance
• The knowledge and experience that current partners have gained over years of working with the DF should be used to strengthen new partners' work
• The DF needs to reduce its own dependency on a sole donor
• The DF should, together with its partners, consider the pros and cons of different options to deal with the new constellation regarding the Embassy's administration of funds for the DF's partners and the DF's strategic partnership with the Embassy as UNCCD chef de file, and reach consensus
• The DF should encourage collaboration of its different partners in a given region on the cross-cutting issues of gender and HIV/AIDS, in order to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their work
• The DF, its partners and external experts should develop a strategy for a rights-based approach adapted to Ethiopian circumstances
• Within its Ethiopia portfolio, the DF already pays good attention to implementation of the UNCCD, but should pay more attention than it does at present to the CBD, if it takes its commitment to agricultural biodiversity seriously
• The Embassy is looking to the DF to help realise the pilot action plan for Norwegian support to Ethiopia's agricultural sector. The DF should be involved already in the early stages of designing this plan, so that it can bring in its experience in working in dryland areas of Ethiopia

Comments from the organisation

Any evaluation is produced within a very limited framework with regards to the composition of the evaluation team, its time available, its access to information and how it analyses the information received. Furthermore, any social reality can be analysed and presented in many different ways, among which an evaluation represents only one. Hence while this evaluation report may be useful as a tool for general learning, it has limited value as a source of information about the particular projects and partners in question. We urge any reader do consult the partners involved or Development Fund before applying this information in a way that may affect the partners and the project.