Mid-Term Review of the Africa RISING Project in the

Ethiopian Highlands

Barry Pound, Adugna Tolera and Harriet Matsaert

Africa RISING Project Mid-term Review Feedback

Workshop, Addis Ababa, 1 April 2015

Outline of presentation

Acknowledgements

Review process

Observations

Preliminary findings

Achievements/strengths of the project

Areas for strengthening

Areas for further considerations

Next steps

Review Process

Meetings with the project coordination team

Meetings and interviews with CG partners

Skypes with USAID and IFPRI Visits to Lemo and

Endamehoni Woredaso Meetings with Woreda-

level IPso Field visits to 4 kebeles

Observations – hitting a moving target

Change in project ‘framework’ – changes from hypotheses + outputs to components to themes…

… and from a farm focus to inclusion of wider scale issues…

… and from a wheat system to a more inclusive mandate.

Similarly, draft scaling plan still at draft stage, and not clear where the project role stops.

Preliminary findings of the review

Achievements/Strengths

Project design

People like the flexibility of the design

There is a high level of ownership; some CG Centres (e.g. ICRAF, ICARDA) were involved in the design with ILRI at an early stage of the project

Note: communication needs to be very good for every one if you want to have a flexible design

Research and Management Approaches

Strengths of the research approach are:

Holistic

Multi-institutional/multidisciplinary

Participatory

project ethos of sharing and collaborating

Flexibility & adaptive management makes project responsive and able to meet opportunities and challenges + facilitate partnerships + integration of systems components (crops, livestock, natural resources) in a systems approach

Output 1 – Situation analysis and program-wide

synthesis

Large amount of qualitative and quantitative data collected on the project sites (including socioeconomic, natural resources, institutional).

Quick wins gave on the ground experience and create links to local partners.

Recognition of heterogeneity – technical & social studies

Output 2 – Integrated systems improvement

Project looks at commodities and landscape level and plans to work at the macro level through the sustainability indicators and monitoring.

Collaborative protocols development (CG and local partners).

Demand driven and wide range of relevant options being tested. Farmers enthusiastic about the options.

Sufficient budget

Protocol on soil and water management links household to landscape level interventions.

Participatory approach in a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional setting

Output 2 (continued)

CIP, CIMMYT and ICARDA collaboration for trial management.

IPs play active role in coordinating and supporting the research.

Includes some original work – (e.g. analysis of landscape scale production against hh nutrition requirements)

Some work is relevant to influencing govt policy (e.g. fertiliserrates according to soil response in highly variable environments)

Inclusion of nutrition/post-harvest in response to recognition of these as gaps

Positive response to some of the technologies after the first season and some initial scaling (where there is community based seed production in particular).

Output 3 – Scaling and delivery of integrated innovation

IPs and FRGs have an important role to play in scaling.

Interest shown by regional, zonal, woreda and kebele level government officials.

Draft scaling plan has been created. Starting the process of thinking about Africa Rising’s role in scaling.

Value chain studies have provided information that will be useful in scaling process.

Involving development partners e.g GRAD is facilitating initial scaling.

Gender and Diversity

Project recognises the importance of, and has put resources into gender analysis.

PCA disaggregated results between youth, women and men and further research is ongoing to look at constraints to women’s participation.

Gender action plan, Gender training and creation of Gender champions at IP level.

Data Management

Good data sharing between partners

Plan for data repository which potentially enables meta analysis.

Human Resources

Wide range of skills and expertise in the partnership

Partnership with local research centers and university staff

Use of consultants and students to fill gaps (but not too many)

Building capacity of local partners by supporting MSc and PhD studies (and in future writing joint peer reviewed papers).

Monitoring and Evaluation

Baseline surveys (IFPRI, PCA, AKT5, etc)

IPs are monitoring their activities and have appointed M& E champions.

At project level, monthly meetings play role in monitoring and guiding adaptive management.

Communication

Well budgeted for and importance appreciated by the project.

Electronic communication much appreciated (especially yammer).

Extensive documentation of the process at program and project level.

Have already put thought into the use of communication for scaling (including partnerships with innovative communication mechanisms e.g Digital Green and Shamba shape up).

Partnerships

Very strong and positive partnerships within CGIAR & with local partners (Woreda Office of Agriculture and research centers, universities).

Beginning to develop partnerships for scaling, for example:

Support from zonal and regional agricultural office is beginning (Tigray).

Working together with government campaign on sustainable land management protocol.

Work with cooperative in Endamehoni and starting in Lemo.

Areas for strengthening

Lack of a clear framework for the project and its partners to follow has led to some challenges:-

Lack of clarity on roles and goals.

Reduced efficiency.

Some duplication and lack of integration in survey design.

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1. Project Design and Management Structure

Areas for Strengthening 2

Output 1

Lateness of some key products which should guide Output 2. Data should be made available asap.

Programme level work on sustainable indicators is needed urgently.

Overloading of farmers?

More understanding of trends to supplement ‘snapshot’ of current systems.

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Areas for Strengthening 3

Output 2Broaden analysis to look at sustainable intensification at the whole farm level (linking the different components at household level).

Include landscape/watershed level features of the system e.gwater budgets to guide thinking and action on sustainable intensification.

Participation of women in FRGs and IPs still lower than targeted (participation of young people, households in less accessible areas?)

Some research gaps identified by farmers and researchers.

Make trial plots size meaningful (forage trials).23

Areas for Strengthening 4

Output 3

Due to delay of key milestones, significant scaling unlikely to be achieved in phase 1.

Project needs to start identifying and engaging partners with skills, resources and networks to enable scaling.

Project should keep track of formal and informal dissemination (example seed potatoes) to understand the mechanisms and destination of scaling.

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Areas for Strengthening 5

Gender and DiversityBroaden focus of gender work to include attention to range of household types, individuals and excluded groups.

Use typologies derived from output 1 activity to ensure inclusion of all typologies and monitor participation and adoption.

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Areas for Strengthening 6

Data management issues

Different formats, programmes and approaches etc. may mean data sets are not compatible (could present a problem for meta analysis).

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Areas for Strengthening 7

Human resource management

Site coordinator overloaded by multiple protocols and attitude of some partners, small financial float and time taken to do and replenish accounts. Accountancy support and better planning could help.

Local expertise is essential for trial management.

M&E staff needed who are answerable to project management and who attend planning and partnership meetings

Additional expertise and networking to support scaling required (discussed under Output 3).

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Areas for Strengthening 8

Monitoring and Evaluation

Late collection of baseline data

No evidence of monitoring plan

No collection of data by IFPRI for over-arching project level monitoring (Outcomes) to guide project management.

No evidence of IFPRI staff apart from the baselineNo country M&E person appointed as was envisaged

Funding for M&E as separate contract – is not integrated

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Areas for Strengthening 10

Communication

Suggest hard copy updates e.g. quarterly newsletters for sharing with Local partners and stakeholders.

Financial Management

Slow disbursement from ILRI financial office has been a problem for some protocols - evidence from ICRISAT, CIAT and both site coordinators interviewed.

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Areas for further consideration - 1

How to keep the benefits of flexible design, while addressing its shortcomings

How to move towards whole farm integration

Getting the balance right between broad & iterative research and farmer support, and not overloading or “changing” farmers

Think about appropriate scaling research methods and partners, including mapping and quantification of scaling, and investigating scaling processes

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Areas for further consideration - 2

Consider diversity in planning, monitoring & scaling of technologies – need to develop different technologies for different social groups within the community

Data collection – M&E info – what, what for, when, who to collect, how to share and use

How do VCs fit into the TOC, and into research and scaling activities and partnerships?

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Areas for further consideration - 3

Does the AR Programme “add value” commensurate with costs, c.f. interaction with CPRs and other SI initiatives

What is the future of the IPs? What is AR’s role?

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Next steps

Development of preliminary recommendations (Thursday am)

Feedback to Project team (Thursday pm)

Draft report to project partners for comment (by end April 2015)

Final report, May 2015

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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR MIXED GROUPS

1. How do Value Chains fit into research and scaling activities and partnerships?

2. Think about mapping and quantification of scaling, and investigating scaling processes

3. How to move towards research into whole farm integration

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Project partners Ethiopia

Local partners Ethiopia

Academic institutions: Wachemo, Mekelle, Madawolabu, Debre Berhan and Hawassa universities; Maichew Agricultural College

Regional research organizations: Amhara Regional Agricultrural Research Institute, Southern Agricultural Research Institute, Tigray Agricultural

Research Institute, Oromia Agricultural Research Institute

Federal research organizations: Ethiopian Institute for Agricultural Research, Ethiopian Health and Nutrition Research Institute

Offices of Agriculture: Endamekoni (Tigray), Basona Worena (Amhara), Lemo (SNNRP) and Sinana (Oromia)

Agricultural Transformation Agency

Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation

africa-rising.net

The presentation has a Creative Commons licence. You are free to re-use or distribute this work, provided credit is given to ILRI.