impact on development than a comparable investment in
rural roads? Knowing the answer is clearly important to
making decisions about how resources should be allocated.
Answering it requires an understanding of the interactions
amongst these alternatives. For example, education can
be expanded more quickly if there are roads that attract
teachers to live near the school rather than commute from a
distant market town.
There are analytical tools to help determine the impacts of
the various alternatives so that a decision can be made. But
in order to use them, one must first question the assumptions
being made and ensure that the analysis includes all the
relevant information—this process is even more important
than the numerical results of the analysis.
Measuring the national impact of a program would make
it more complicated to gauge the impact of specific projects.
However, this could be an important and needed opportunity
for project managers to improve their understanding of
development dynamics and strategies, particularly the role
of national institutions.
Focus on Institution Building
USAID/Ben Barber
A focus on national aggregate results immediately
shifts the emphasis to building and strengthening national
institutions, because it is only through national institutions
and programs that results at that level can be realized. For
agriculture in low-income countries, those institutions will
be largely in the public sector.
It takes time to establish and staff a competent research
and extension network. There is an array of necessities for
agriculture that are unlikely to be provided by the private
sector in developing countries—establishing rural education
and public health systems, building and sustaining irrigation
and transportation networks, establishing a regulatory
framework and accountability system. Getting all these in
place is difficult and cannot be accomplished within a threeto-five-year time frame; it could take a decade or more.
However, there may be technologies that are nearly ready
to be used on the ground and could have a quick impact.
Also, farmers pay attention—when they see research farms
being built, they realize that improvements are on the way.
This was true in Afghanistan, where farmers reaped benefits
from such efforts prior to the decades of disruption that
began with the Soviet invasion in 197 9.
Such a focus changes terms of reference for those private
contractors, universities and NGOs actually implementing
U.S. development assistance. The American program
specialists would be expected to partner with host country
nationals in national institutions, whether public or nongovernmental. Expatriate staff would work on critical tasks—
USAID has supported Mexico’s agricultural programs to improve various crop production for farmers.
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