Abstract
Most development organisations have traditionally used the Logical Framework Approach to design, monitor and evaluate development projects. We depart from this mechanical view and join an emerging literature that recognises project complexity as well as the importance of institutional dynamics. The article deals with an evaluation of a multi-sectoral project in Tanzania, centred on the production, selling and distribution of milk in schools. By combining qualitative and quantitative methods and using the capability approach as conceptual framework, we analysed the project’s effect on selected functionings, entitlements and agency of the different stakeholders. We found a positive effect on nutrition knowledge, farmers’ earnings and milk production, and an interesting unintended outcome of the project, an increase in children’s school attendance. However, an in-depth institutional analysis reveals problems in the institutional setting and in the relationships between stakeholders that undermine a sustainable human development process.
Abstract
Habituellement, la plupart des organisations de développement utilisent l’approche du cadre logique en vue de créer, faire le suivi et évaluer les projets de développement. Nous partons de ce point de vue mécanique et nous nous joignons aux quelques ouvrages de recherche existants qui reconnaissent la complexité des projets, ainsi que l’importance des dynamiques institutionnelles. Cet article traite de l’évaluation d’un projet multi-sectoriel en Tanzanie, centré sur la production, la vente et la distribution de lait dans les écoles. En combinant des méthodes qualitatives et quantitatives et en utilisant l’approche par les capacités comme cadre conceptuel, nous avons analysé les effets du projet sur certaines façons de fonctionner, sur les droits et sur la volonté des différents acteurs du projet. Nous avons trouvé un effet positif sur la connaissance nutritionnelle, sur les revenus des fermiers et sur la production de lait, ainsi qu’un résultat inattendu et intéressant, une augmentation du taux de présence des enfants à l’école. Cependant, une analyse institutionnelle approfondie révèle des problèmes dans les lieux institutionnels et au sein des relations entre acteurs qui pèsent sur le processus d’un développement humain durable.
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Notes
The authors are fully aware of the limits of participatory methods and the challenges faced when employing them. Ensuring informed participation of the most vulnerable people and involving people representative of different groups, with a close look at structural inequalities in the communities, are the most important aspects we took into consideration during the fieldwork (Mayoux, 2005).
Although the research project did not entail an ethics committee, we did make sure that data collection conformed to ethical principles. More specifically, participants were informed of the aim of the research, and fieldwork activities were conducted only after participants gave their consent. The children were identified and informed with the collaboration of their teachers. Children’s participation was not compulsory, and consent to take part in research activities was also given by their parents.
All the nominal monetary data referring to the situation before the project were converted into current shillings using official Tanzanian Consumer Price Indices.
This is an unintended outcome only with reference to project documents, where an increase in children’s education is not mentioned as one of the objectives; the existing literature, instead, shows that interventions like this can have an important effect on education.
Per capita milk consumption in Tanzania is currently around 40 litres, far below the 200 litres recommended by FAO.
It is not easy to distinguish between the contributions of the two programmes. However, the other programme had only a partial chronological overlap with the CEFA-Granarolo programme, and the latter is larger in terms of coverage and financial disbursement. Moreover, during the interviews we specified that the ‘before-project’ refers to the CEFA-Granarolo project, and thus, the initial conditions already discount most of the effects of the other programme. The above reasons lead me to believe that the changes are mainly due to the project evaluated here.
It could be that people in poor areas overemphasise the project’s contribution, hoping to receive more assistance in the future. While we cannot fully exclude this interpretation, the fact that the qualitative study reaches similar results confirms our conclusions.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the financial contribution of the Italian food company Granarolo S.p.A. for carrying out the evaluation of the Njombe Milk Project. Moreover, the authors would like to thank Aliez Kay for her brilliant work in the field and all the participants in the 2011 EAEPE Conference held in Wien, where a previous version of the paper was presented. Finally, we would like to thank two anonymous referees for their precious comments.
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Burchi, F., De Muro, P. & Vicari, S. The Development Project as an Institution for Agency and Capability Expansion: The Case of the Njombe Milk Project. Eur J Dev Res 27, 19–36 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2014.22
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2014.22