FARM-Africa WEDP End of Project Evaluation 2008

8/14/2019 FARM-Africa WEDP End of Project Evaluation 2008

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Farm Africa, Ethiopia

Womens EnterpriseDevelopmentProject

Final evaluation5-28th March 2008

Hugh Allen and Fetenu Bekele

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Solingen, Germany

6th April 2008

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Table of Contents

List of Acronyms3

1 Executive Summary...............................................................................................................................4

2 Terms of reference...............................................................................................................................6

3 Evaluation design and approach...............................................................................................................................7

4 Impact evaluation

...............................................................................................................................11

5 Programme evaluation...............................................................................................................................35

6 Programme implementation...............................................................................................................................45

7 Programme design...............................................................................................................................50

8 Annexes

Annex 1: Full Terms of reference52

Annex 2: Schedule of visits59

Annex 3 : Gender specialist report : selected extracts58

Annex 4: Impact evaluation questionnaire66

Annex 5 Group questionnaire

76Annex 6: Cooperative questionnaire

80

Annex 7: Impact evaluation respondents84

Annex 8: Wealth categorisation87

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List of Terms and Acronyms

BIGA................................................................ Bright Image for Generation Association

CARE.....................................................Cooperative for Assistance and Relief EverywhereCBLA.................................................................................Community-based Legal AdvisorCD ..............................................................................................................Country DirectorDA ....................................................................................................Development AssistantFA .................................................................................................................Field AssistantFGD................................................................................................Focus Group DiscussionFGM..............................................................................................Female Genital MutilationHR ...........................................................................................................Human ResourcesHIV/AIDS............Human Immuno Deficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency SyndromeIGA..............................................................................................Income-generating ActivityIddir.................................................................................Traditional Ethiopian burial societyIqqub.......................................................................................Traditional Ethiopian ROSCA

MFI.................................................................................................Micro Finance InstitutionMIS...................................................................................Management Information SystemPC ..................................................................................................Programme CoordinatorPM......................................................................................................Programme ManagerTHP...........................................................................................Traditional Harmful PracticeTimad.....................................................................................Land area equal to hectareVSL...............................................................................................Village Savings and LoanWEDP.................................................................Womens Enterprise Development ProjectWG..............................................................................................................Womens Group

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1 Executive Summary

WEDP has been successful in achieving its goals. It has reached the number of people itset out to reach, with the full set of services prescribed in the project design. Its activitieshave led to an extraordinary change in the level of economic and social security of its

targeted beneficiaries. Assets (obtained through higher levels of economic activity andthrough asset transfer) have increased to a level that has lifted people from the bottom ofthe economic and social ladder in their communities, to solidly place them in the middleclasses. Access to education and health services has improved dramatically. Nutrition hasimproved with people eating more often than before and accessing a wider variety of food.The overall awareness of peoples rights has improved and HIV/AIDS awareness isamongst the highest ever seen by members of the evaluation team.

Having said this, it has taken a very long time to achieve these results and it has cost a lotof money. This is for two main reasons:

The range of services on offer is very broad. Half of the projects activities couldbe eliminated without a seriously negative affect on livelihood and social outcomes

The decision to make a long-term effort to create cooperatives has been verycostly and has left the participants with services that are not very well adapted to theirneeds and burdened with technical complexity that has, in effect, reduced theirautonomy and choice.

The following are the basic recommendations of the team:

Any future project should focus on savings and credit, asset transfer and expandingthe CBLA system

Livestock asset transfer and expanding the CBLA system should be set up separatefrom setting up systems of savings and credit (the time required for setting up savingsand credit groups calls for a much shorter time of engagement). The livestock assetsin question should be based on beneficiary choice from a broader (althoughstandardised) range of livestock.

Access to savings and credit services should be demand driven and open to men aswell as women. There should be no linkage between receiving assets and acontingent requirement to join a savings and credit group

No subsidies in the form of building or cash should be offered to womens groups thatengage in savings and credit. These groups should depend for their capitalisationsolely on member contributions.

Savings and credit activities should be based on the presumption that savings andcredit groups should be highly local in character, very small scale (10-25 members)and not in need of legal personality.

A savings and credit methodology should be adopted that allows for a much greater

degree of real choice with respect to the terms and conditions of savings and lending.Very strong emphasis should be laid on:

flexibility of savings deposit and withdrawal (this is critical)

flexible length of loan terms

flexible repayment conditions

frequent access to savings opportunities

regular access to borrowing opportunities.

Savings and credit activities should be entirely de-linked from presumptions aboutevolution into cooperatives and should use simplified systems of record-keeping andsimplified procedures that allow them to become independent, profitable and fullyautonomous within 12 months.

Greater emphasis should be placed on a results-based standard of analysis (ratherthan creating a static data bank) and more emphasis needs to be placed on reviewingstrategic assumptions on a regular basis

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Greater emphasis should be placed on supervision (especially in savings and credit),and staff training (particularly in savings and credit) should be more specific andrigorous

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2 Terms of reference

The objectives and outputs of the evaluation were:

Specific Objectives:

To evaluate the achievements of the project against its purpose, outputs andtargets and its contribution to the overall goal as outlined in the projectproposal;

To assess the overall project efficiency and effectiveness, and the relevance andcoherence of the project components /approaches in addressing the issue ofwomen empowerment;

To evaluate the impact of the project on womens livelihood in the target Woredas,and assess the sustainability of project impact;

To draw best practices and key lessons learnt during project implementation which canbe taken forward by FARM Africa or can be taken forward in the next phase project

if recommended; To evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of Farm Africas planning, management

and M&E systems in the delivery of the programme;

To provide recommendations for FARM-Africas future work.

Outputs expected from the Evaluation

The major output of the final evaluation is a report of findings and recommendations onthe way forward. The following process should be followed

Submission of draft report in soft copy within 5 days after the field data collection, forthe CD, PM and the PC to review and approve.

Workshop presentation of the interim findings to wider stakeholders for discussion and

refinement. Submission of the final report both in hard and soft copies within 3 days after

incorporating comments.

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3 Evaluation design and approach

3.1 Background

The Evaluation of the WEDP was undertaken by an international consultant (male) the

team leader, and a local consultant (female), the latter to look into the gender dimensionsof the project. Three project personnel, (one supervisory senior staff and 2 FieldAssistants - 2 male one female) assisted the team in administration of questionnaires,focus group discussions (FGD) and consultations with women leaders and collaboratingbodies. A female local consultant with expertise in financial accounting assisted the teamleader in translations and review of records.

The team leader took major responsibility for design of the evaluation framework withinputs from the local consultant in finalising the survey instruments. The local consultantwas a gender expert, responsible for conducting FGDs with 14 womens groups andcooperatives, while the international consultant was a microfinance specialist withextensive experience in community-managed microfinance: he concentrated more on the

financial and institutional quality/performance of the womens groups and cooperatives.The evaluation team members were engaged in constant consultations and feedback onaspects of their observations and findings.

Consultation with other stakeholders included the Womens Affairs Offices (WAOs) atWoreda, Zonal and Regional levels, and Bright Image for Generation Association (BIGA),legal aid group. Regional contact with the WAO was short due to busy schedule of theOffice Head. However, discussions were held with the Head of Womens Capacity BuildingSection and the Legal Support Unit of the Regional WAO.

Consultations with stakeholders were also undertaken. The gender expert visiting theWomens Affairs Offices (WAOs) at Woreda, Zonal and Regional levels. Visit to the

Regional WAO was brief due to the busy schedule of the Office Head; but discussionswere held with the head of the Womens Capacity Building Section and Legal Support Unitstaff, mostly on nature of collaboration, challenges and prospects for future partnership.The discussions with these stakeholders were to determine the nature of theircollaboration with FARM Africa and on challenges and prospects for future partnership. Asummary of the evaluation findings was presented to stakeholders by the team leaders ata half-day workshop, with brief inputs on gender dimension by the local consultant.

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3.2 Design

Using the project logical framework as the point of departure for the design of theevaluation, the following general framework was developed.

Figure 1: General framework

It was decided to conduct a simultaneous impact and programme evaluation.

The impact evaluation focussed on the final goal of the project and looked principally atthe lives of programme participants. This required the evaluation team to adopt a two-pronged approach

interviews with 40 programme clients in their households and interviews with a controlgroup of 20 non-participants drawn from the same communities

Interviews with 10 focus groups of 15 women (150 total)

The following framework for the impact evaluation was followed:

Figure 2: Impact evaluation framework

Area of Inquiry Type of Evaluation Level of Inquiry

Permanent changes in the lives of thetarget group

Impact Clients: Household Individual

Community-based service provider(Group and cooperative) capacity,performance and efficiency

Programme Community-basedservice provider

Clients

Implementation: effectiveness andefficiency of the implementing institutionand capacity to sustain the program

Programme Implementinginstitutions

Government and NGOpartners

Farm Africa

Program Design: relevance of theprogramme to the needs of clients andmethod of delivery

Programme Community-basedservice provider

Clients

Area ofInquiry

IndicatorsMeans of

MeasurementApproach

Individual Control of resources by women, including enterpriseresources, business and loan decision making

Household decision making

Level of self-esteem on the part of women clients

Female labour allocation Number of working children HIV/Aids awareness

Capacity to define empowerment Awareness of legal rights

Participation in group & public activities, at what level

Individualparticipantinterview

Randomsample ofhouseholdsand interview

with groupmember. 40interviews withmembers and20 interviewswith nonmembers.

HouseholdinterviewsusingstructuredquestionnaireDaily review offindings

Household Level of household assets: productive and non-productive

Consumption of goods & services: housing, education,food, health

Number of income-generating activities

Allocation of HH labour to income-generating activities

Householdsurvey

Community Changes in attitudes towards womens rights

Changes in attitudes towards womens status andparticipation in decision-making

FGD andhousehold survey

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The programme evaluation looked at three different levels:

The efficiency and effectiveness of womens groups and cooperatives in terms of:

Their organisational capacity,

The degree to which they satisfy their members needs

Their level of financial sustainability and;

T heir efficiency

The efficiency of FARM Africa in the delivery of its services

Staff efficiency

Cost per member served

Strategy for sustainability

The quality and appropriateness of the programmes design in terms of:

Interventions: were the interventions appropriate

Methodology: was the methodology used to deliver the interventions appropriate

Was the way in which the services were delivered by the project and through itspartnership appropriate and effective

The following table outlines the issues that were considered in looking at womens groupsand cooperatives:

Figure 3: Service provider performance (womens groups and cooperatives)

Area of Inquiry IndicatorsMeans of

MeasurementApproach

Institutionalcapacity

Goals

Staff/leadership capacity Level of financial

resources/sustainability Plans exist and are followed

Appropriate organisational structure Systems (financial, HR, M&E)

Quality and nature of linkages to otherorganisations

FGD of members

Interview withstaff/leaders

Review of records

FGD Interview with

staff/leaders Review of records

FGD

4 groups and2 Coops inboth Hadiyaand KembataTembaro

Evaluators

will firstwitnessmeetings andassess thegroupsqualitythroughobservation..

Client/membersatisfactionproxies

Client transaction costs (time andease of participation) and tradeoffs

Participation in group-level decision-making

Attendance rates

Retention rate (%) Membership growth rate

FGD

FGD

Review of records

Review of records Review of records

Financial

performance

Average savings per member

mobilised to date Annualised return on savings Average member investment

Average outstanding loan size

Review of records

Review of records Review of records

Review of records

Operatingefficiency

% of members with active loans

Loan fund utilisation rate

Review of records

Review of records

Figure 4 on the following page outlines the issues that were considered in looking at themanner of FARM Africas implementation of the project.

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Figure 4: FARM Africas implementation strategy and efficiency

Area of Inquiry IndicatorsMeans of

Measurement

Strategy Service delivery channel (groups and cooperatives) Partnership strategy Strategy for sustainability of service delivery Strategy for long-term programme growth

Review of projectproposal

Operatingefficiency

Caseload: Associations per field staff

Caseload: members per field staff Ratio of field staff to total staff

Staff turnover Cost per member assisted: Outputs 1-4

Review of records

Figure 5 below outlines the issues that were considered in evaluating the programmesdesign.

Figure 5: Programme design

Area of Inquiry Indicators Means ofMeasurement

Interventions andMethodology

Client level services are appropriate to the needs andcharacteristics of clients and the environment

Goat rearing

Credit and savings Rights education/advocacy

Literacy HIV/AIDS

Value added () of cooperative formation

Service delivery methodology is appropriate to clients andenvironment

Interventions and methodology are delivered cost-

effectively (Cost/member/intervention) A realistic strategy for sustainability/exit exists

FGD and householdsurvey and staff enquiry

FGD

FGD

Review of budgets and

expenditure Project plan and

management interviews

Delivery Channel Strategic plans exist that are compatible with theorganisations goals and objectives and are regularlyrevised

Operational plans exist that are compatible with thestrategic plan and are regularly updated

Individual work plans exist and are regularly updated.These focus on results in conformity with outputs andgoals

Organisational structure is adequate and appropriate Systems:

HR M&E: a system of performance measurement exists,

which focuses on results and ensures close supervisionof field activities

Financial management Relationships with partners

Review of programmeproposal or businessplan

Operational or programreports

Review of Work plans

Review of organigram

Review of HR records Review of M&E/MIS

records Review of financial

records Partner interviews

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4 Impact evaluation

4.1 Goals of the project

The project logical framework has the following final goal:

To reduce the structural imbalance in womens status and welfare in selectedcommunities through the empowerment of women to play a strategic role in theireconomic, social and cultural life.

This rather amorphous goal has a number of indicators, none of which is quantified:

More women are present and active at all levels of the political process in Ethiopia

Women have increased income levels within and outside the home

Increased involvement of women in social interactions

Improved status of women in households

Reduction in violation of womens rights

Improved access to family planning and reproductive health Improved attendance of girls at all levels of the education system

Improved literacy level of project beneficiaries

Family nutrition improved

It was quickly evident that some of these indicators were inappropriate or simplyunobtainable. We did not, for example, focus a great deal on attempting to measurewomen being preset at all levels of the political process in Ethiopia we looked only at thelocal level.

In addition, we added a few indicators as follows:

Household decision-making

Time allocation of labour to different and changing tasks Child labour

Awareness of HIV/AIDS and its causes and prevention (a discrete project objective)

Awareness of legal rights (another discrete objective of the project).

4.2 Selection of respondents

The selection of respondents was stratified at two levels. We first divided the 40respondents who participated in the project into two groups spread equally across theHadiya and Kambata Tembaro (KT) in the six project Woredas of Kedida Gamela,Damboya, Angacha, Lemu, Anlemo and Misha. 20 project participants from Hadiya and20 from Kembata Tembaro were selected as were10 non-participants from the each of the

same two zones. We further stratified respondents equally into those who hadparticipated in the project for 6 years, 4 years and 2 years. Selection of the actualrespondents was thereafter random, from the registers of the groups in question. The non-participant respondents were selected by respondents. They were asked to identifymembers of their own community whom they considered to be of approximately similarsocio-economic status at the time that the participant became a member of a womensgroup.

Respondents were interviewed in the households, to reduce the tendency for positiveexaggeration of status and change that accompanies focus-group change assessment. Italso provided the enumerators with the opportunity to personally verify throughobservation many of the responses, particularly those relating to changes in assets and

housing.

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4.3 Household survey findings

4.3.1 Assets

The following tables show changes in productive and non-productive asset levels. The shaded areas indicate assets that were selected to reflectwealth ranking classification.

n.b. respondents owned no calves and goats 3 years ago and own significant numbers now. No percentage increase can therefore be measured,and N/A is the nominal result. In this case it is more to the point to note that the numbers owned are significant on a per-household basis.

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The table below shows changes in asset levels for non-participants:

The changes in asset levels are noticeably greater for participants than for non-participants. Moist striking of all were the following:

Land areas for the target group increased from 1.5 to 2.28 timads (1/4 ha) for the target group. Control group land access remained static at1.27 timads. This is largely attributable to target group participants no longer needing to rent out land to raise cash

Cows, bulls and oxen increased between 292% and 417% for the target group and between 0% and 70% for the control group

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While non-productive assets for the control group increased by an average of morethan 100%, the non-productive assets of the target group increased by approximately300%.

The following table shows the changes in the quality of housing belonging to projectparticipants and indicates the percentage of respondents who have implemented these

changes. The Factor Comparison column compares these numbers with the control groupof non-participants in terms of percentage difference. It shows that in most cases housingquality and improvements are more pronounced amongst the participant group thanamong the non participant group. It also indicates that roofing quality is higher in theparticipant group, with a greater proportion enjoying Kifkif and good grass cover relative toDasasa gojo thatch, which is the lowest quality.

What is striking about the changes in asset and housing quality is that while all of theproject participants were classified as belonging to the poorest of the poor at the outset ofthe project, the majority have climbed two classifications and now belong to the mediumclasses.

The poorest (5th wealth ranking) are typically characterised by the following:

Land holding timad (1/8 ha)

Share animals with others in categories 1 and 2 and receive 1/3 1/4 of the benefit attime of sale

Make living principally from the sale of own labour

Depend on government or NGO support Very small house with betam desasa gojo grass cover, or may live as a dependent

with others

The middle-income group (3rd wealth ranking) are typically characterised as follows:

Land holding 1-2 timads

Domestic animals that include 1 ox, 1 cow, 1 sheep, 1 donkey

2-4 chickens

Medium sized house with grass cover

With an average land holding of 2.28 timads; domestic animals that average .78 oxen,1.28 cows/bulls, .8 heifers and 2.55 goats and 4.15 chickens, these families have shifted

upwards two wealth categories and are firmly in the middle class, while non-participantsremain either amongst the poorest of the poor or the poor. By and large the non-participant group started out with a better asset base and, while they have increased their

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The most significant finding (from other sources) is that the amount of money invested in womens groups and cooperatives by the participantgroup is extremely small when compared to the money invested in Iqqub. A typical contribution to a womens group savings account is 3 Birrper month, compared to about 20 Birr forIqqub. This is a real indictment of the savings system, because it implies that members do not look onwomens groups and cooperative savings as a real form of savings. Their money is locked up and cannot be accessed, while yet it is put at riskin the loan portfolio for a negligible (negative) return and, as a result, it appears that the minimum amount is invested, sufficient only to provideaccess to loans. This needs to change.

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4.3.3 Welfare: access to education

There is a significant increase in both male and female school attendance rates forchildren of participants. Males increase from 46% to 94% while females increase from50% (they were higher to start with) 97%.

Male non-participant rates decreased from a high 81.82% to only 79.55% while femaleswent from 64 to 68%.

It is clear that there has been relatively little change in the non-participant control group,which had a high enrolment rate for males and a low enrolment rate for females, but asignificant increase in enrolment rates for both males and females in the participant groupto a rate of that is above 93% in both cases, but marginally higher at 97% for females.

4.3.4 Welfare: Nutrition - meals eaten daily

The number of meals eaten daily increased significantly for the participant group (seetables on following page). 82% of people eat 2 meals a day prior to the project, while 82%now eat 3 meals a day. Conversely, there was a slight decline in the number of mealseaten daily by the non-participant control group. While 75% used to eat 2 meals a day,

now only 70% do so, while 10% now eat only 1 meal a day, whereas 3 years ago no-onefell into this category. The number eating 3 meals a day also fell from 25$ to now only20%. In short, while there has been a dramatic turnaround in the number of meals eatendaily by the participant group, the number of meals eaten daily by the control group hasfallen slightly.

The reasons given for this are shown in the subsequent tables. They indicate that by farthe most common reason for increases in the number of meals is an increase in income orproduction. Elsewhere in the analysis this is attributed mainly to access to financialservices and goat loans, in that order.

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4.3.5 Welfare: Nutrition - Variety of food consumed

The tables on the following page show that for both the participant and non-participantgroups there has been a decline in the amount of meat consumed. This is attributedmainly to price increases. 63% of participants eat more food on average across allclasses, 18% eat the same while 19% eat less. In the control group the numbers are 14%,36% and 50% respectively. It is clear, then, that a wider variety of food is eaten by theparticipant group and in larger amounts. Once again, the principal reason for positivechange is increased income.

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4.3.6 Welfare: Affordability of health services

The following tables show that 75% of participant believes health services to be more affordable, while 20% have experienced no change. Bycontrast 45% of non-participants believe that there has been no change in affordability, while 40% believe that they are less affordable. Once

again, the situation of thecontrol group has declined,while that of the participantgroup has, on average,improved.

Once again, the main reasonfor improvement is believed tobe increased income, whileincreases in family size areseen as the main contributor todecline for the non-participantcontrol group. It is significantthat increases in family size arealso mentioned by theparticipants who experienced adecline, but this is a relativelysmall percentage of the totalsample (5%) compared to thenon-participant group (35%).

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4.3.7 Income-generating activities

The tables below show that the participant group averaged 0.25 income-generatingactivities (IGAs) per household 3 years ago and average 1.5 now. The average householdnow has 1.5 IGAs. The non-participant control group had 0.85 IGAs per household 3

years ago but only 0.7 now. This repeats a pattern seen across a wide range of livelihoodindicators, of the control-group experiencing a small but distinct decline in livelihoodsecurity, while the participant group experiences a dramatic improvement.

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4.3.8 Income-generating activity labour

The tables on the leftshow a general increasein the amount of household adult labourapplied to IGAs, with byfar the most dramaticincrease being the timespent by participantwomen, up from .225IGAs per woman to now1.08. The non-participant control groupshows no change in

male adult labour working in householdIGAs, but a sharp (25%)decline in adult femaleengagement from 0.4IGAs per household to0.3. In participanthouseholds womenoperate 1.08 IGAs, whilein non-participanthouseholds the numberis now only 0.3.

There is a negligibledecline in boys and girlsworking in IGAs inparticipant householdsand a similarly smallincrease in non-participant households.The numbers in these

cases are so small as to be statistically unreliable.

4.3.9 Income-generating activity durability

The average length of time that IGAs were claimed to be in operation was approximatelysimilar in both participant and non-participant households, at between 10 and 12 months.These estimates need to be treated with scepticism, since many of them (such as coffeeand teff trading) are by definition seasonal, but were not reported as such. Nevertheless,most activities listed as being most popular are not seasonal. This is an important pointbecause participant respondents consistently claimed (with a few exceptions) that loanterms (always 6 months) were of far too short a duration and that a term of 12 months wasuniversally felt to be more appropriate. Considering the types of enterprises that are themost popular there is no evidence to support this claim. It is far more likely that thenegative real interest rate on loans is a far more powerful Inducement to hold on tosomeone-elses capital than any pressing need for investment in IGAs, which, by theirnature, have very large margins and provide extraordinary returns. 1

1 With an interest rate that averages 7.5%, and a rate of national inflation definitely above10%, there is every reason to pay over the long-term

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4.3.10 Wage labour and migration

Neither the participant nor the non-participant group experienced much change in thenumber of family members engaged in wage labour. It should, however, be noted that thenon-participant households had more than double the likelihood to be working for wages an indicator of vulnerability.

The following tables indicate the percentage of family members migrating to seek work.

This was significantly higher for the participant households than for non-participanthouseholds. In both cases these numbers are rising. 32.5% of participant householdshave a family member who has migrated to seek work, and 20% of non-participanthouseholds.

It is unclear what this means. On the one hand, migration may be a survival strategy oflast resort, indicating greater (and growing) vulnerability of the participant group. On theother hand it may be that the participant groups access to broader economic opportunityand the means to travel and seek work is bringing with it the opportunity to work for wagesin the wider world. Further enquiry is needed to clarify this.

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4.3.11 Social capital and status

85% of participants felt their status had improved relative to three years ago, with 15%reporting no change. Members of the non-participant control group also felt that they were

either of higher social

standing than three yearsago, or that there was nochange. The percentage ofthose feeling that there wasno change was, however,75%, indicating a morewidespread rise in perceivedsocial status amongst theparticipant group.

The reasons given for positive change differed between the participant group and thecontrol group as follows:

The reasons given for changesin social status were moreemphatic for the participantgroup than those for the non-participant group, with the mostfrequent response related toability to participate. Thisappears to fill a need to beactive and recognised outsidethe confines of the household

and supersedes indicatorsrelated to respect or recognition.

The reasons cited for thischange are of particularinterest. Emphatically, themost common reason citedrelated to training (67% of

participants), followed at some distance by access to credit (41%), awareness of legalrights (38%), goat loans (33% and self-reliance (33%). Non-participants whose status hadimproved gave reasons that were more personal in nature, such as having worked hard

(10%), running an IGA (10%) and improved educational level (5%). Overwhelmingly, then,the attribution of change by the participant group related to project services.

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4.3.12 Gender resource control

One of the unexpected outcomes of the survey was the degree to which genderrelationships are changing across the board. There is a much greater degree of intra-family economic equity for participants and non-participants alike. Having said this, thedegree of change is more pronounced within participant families. This appears to be aresult of the need, across the board, for women to assume a much higher level ofresponsibility for cash-based economic activity. With this responsibility appears to comethe right to dispose of the profits with, apparently, little resistance from men who might beassumed to want to protect traditional prerogatives.

What is probably more significant than the degree to which women exercise the right toeconomic autonomy and control over enterprise income, is the much broader range ofresources controlled by women in participant families than in non-participant. A number ofparticipant women appear to be making gains in terms of material resources (unspecified)and, significantly, a few have acquired the right to manage and dispose of cash crops andfamily labour, both of which have hitherto been traditional male preserves.

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4.3.13 Gender cash and business income decision-making

The following tables relate to household level decision-making and are of particular significance.

These tables need careful interpretation. Across the board there has been a very strong shift away from masculine control of decision makingrelated to the expenditure of household cash (from 73% to 5%) and the management of household business (from 33% to 5%). What isespecially noticeable is not that decision-making has largely been ceded by men, largely for the benefit of women, but that decision-making is joint where before it was not (from 13% to 55% for household decision making and from 13% to 43% for business decision-making). Theparticipant group is mainly distinguished from the non-participant group to the extent that decision-making regarding household expenditure isfar more likely to be also involve children. To a lesser (but interesting) degree this also applies in the case of business decision-making andrelates, largely, to the participation of juveniles and young adults who remain, nominally, dependents.

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4.3.14 HIV/AIDS

It is interesting to note that across both participant and non-participant households therehas been a dramatic increase in HIV/AIDS awareness. This applies to men, women andchildren above the age of 5. Mostly this awareness is said to arise from the many sourcesof information on the subject that are available to participants and non-participants alike.

Examples of these sources were the mass media (radio and the newspapers), otherNGOs and government. While participant women were more aware of HIV/AIDS issuesthan non-participant women (100% vs. 90%) male awareness was higher in the nonparticipant group (95% vs. 84%). Child awareness was extremely high in both groups. Itis possible to conclude from these results that HIV/AIDS awareness does not particularlydepend on project activities. This is borne out by the low relative value placed on thisservice by participants.2

2 See 4.3.17: Priority services

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4.3.15 Labour allocation

The labour allocation comparisons indicate that the burden of household labour is heavierfor non-participants than for non participants, but that approximately the same number ofparticipants is experiencing an increased labour burden as those who experience adecrease (30% more, vs. 33% less). What is noticeable, however, is that 90% report

working more on their IGAs as compared to only 25% of the non-participants and 88%report a greater amount of time devoted to group participation compared to 25% for thecontrol group. These figures are entirely predictable, bearing in mind the effort the projecthas made to promote IGAs and group-based activity. The result is, however, notnecessarily positive. While time spent on an IGA is, usually, considered time well spent, itis not clear that time spent with a group, beyond a certain amount, is necessarily seen aspositive. The evolution of womens groups into cooperatives demands approximatelydouble the time allocation. The reasons for this are the much greater distances womenhave to travel to cooperatives than they do to attend community-based womens groupmeetings and the much greater time taken to complete savings and loan transactions,arising out of the fact that cooperatives are usually made up of 2-6 womens groups andthe same transactions now have to be carried out for a much larger number of

participants. This may well be an Achilles heel for the sustainability of cooperativeoperations (especially when increased dependency on external technical support,increased cost and reduced transparency are taken into account).

There is also evidence, adduced from focus group interviews that the additional burden onfemales may also be falling on girls who, although nominally enrolled in schools, may oftenbe absent to support their mothers in housework and IGA activity. Further research in thisarea is important, because if true to any great degree, may lead to under-performance andconstrained opportunity for girls.

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4.3.16 Womens rights

The findings here indicate a generally high awareness of female rights in both participantand non-participant groups, but with distinctly superior awareness amongst the participantgroup. Participants had a 99.5% level of knowledge of 10 statutory rights, while non-participant awareness was 66.5 still impressive but clearly inferior.

It is clear from these results that the project has exceeded its own expectations and theteam was very much impressed both with the CBLAs passion for what they are doing andthe clear popularity and value of their services..

FARM Africas innovative system of introducing paralegal workers has had far reachingimpact, with spin-off effects for non-project participants in the Kebeles who continue to

benefit from their services. However, the sustainability of this important service isquestionable as the CBLA are lone activists, with no institutional attachment and subjectto the risk of personal violence. The motivation that has sustained them so far cannot

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continue without minimum remuneration either from the Kebele administration or theindividuals/groups they serve. They also need protection as they go about bringingoffenders to justice (abusive husbands, violators of womens rights who practice THPs).Kebele womens Associations and Woreda WAO need to mobilise other concernedstakeholders to support and sustain the work of the paralegals.

FARM Africa should help these dedicated activists to register as local NGOs with somekind of attachment to BIGA and the Ethiopian Womens Legal Association (EWLA), so thatthey can operate as a civil society organisation. The details of ensuring legal identity forthe CBLA should be discussed with BIGA. Small seed money for setting up their offices inthe Kebeles, attached to women's association office, and in Woredas to the WAO officeshould be options to consider.

4.3.17 Service priority

Participants were asked to prioritise the importance of the 5 principal programme services:HIV/AIDS education; statutory rights as they pertain to women; goat rearing; savings and

credit and literacy. The weighting applied to each choice was from 5 (highest priority) to 1(lowest priority). The following results were obtained.

It is clear from this analysis that very low priority is placed on HIV/AIDS education(probably because it is available from multiple sources). It is also clear that relatively lowvalue is placed on literacy. . Literacy education, which was originally intended to befunctional literacy, has not progressed to that stage. Although group members give valueto this service, for which paid facilitators are in place, their interest is more in graduatingfrom signing documents with their thumbs (perceived to be an embarrassment), to signingin the conventional sense. But participation has not been regular, nor has the trainingcontent been adequate and attractive. The Womens Groups appear not to have ownedthis activity and have not identified compelling reasons for taking it to a higher level..Because there is no identified linkage to higher-order benefits that might be exploitedthrough literacy, these need to be identified and more clearly illustrated if indeed theyexist, bearing in mind the current 18 hour labour burden for the average woman.

The evidence for this is not only the low overall score, but the fact that neither activity wasidentified by any participant as having the highest priority. The team speculated (but didnot confirm) that the low-priority activities are those that are either available from other

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sources or of short inherent duration. While savings and credit are planned to bepermanent activities and goat rearing has also a long-term character, literacy training ,HIV/AIDS awareness and, to some extent, legal education are short-term, although thereis noticeably higher importance placed on legal education, which has direct relevance todaily life.

4.3.17 Participation in group-based activity

A presumption of the evaluation logic is that increased participation in group-basedcommunity-level activity is a proxy for increased social capital and self confidence. Theevaluation measured not only the incidence of participation, but also looked at the level ofparticipation (i.e. whether or not a respondent was able to assume positions ofmanagement responsibility in community-based groups. The findings showed that theoverall rate of participation had risen, with the average respondent now participating as amember in 2.15 groups, up from 1.125 3 years ago. By contrast non-participantparticipation, while also rising, climbed from 0.8 to 1.05. Participants were also more likelythan non-participants to be in leadership positions, with an average individual participation

rate as Chairperson, Secretary, Treasurer or committee member of 0.225, up from 0.2. Bycontrast, current non-participant participation rates in leadership positions dropped slightlyfrom 0.3 to 0.15.

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4.3.18 Attribution for change

Participants clearly distinguished between material and intangible reasons for positivechanges in their lives. The most striking finding is that training services are rated ashaving the most significance in bringing about change: not asset transfer; not the creationof community-based institutions, not access to finance. The types of training were not

articulated, but the abiding impression was that it was largely in the realm of small-business activity and goat management.

The following table lists the factors seen to be most pertinent to positive change and thislargely reflects the findings in the types of service priority (4.3.17). The reason thattraining did not show up in table 4.3.17 is that the choices were pre-defined by thequestionnaire. Where the question was open ended, as in this case, training emerged asprobably the most important variable influencing positive change. Further study is neededto arrive at a better sense of what the term training actually means for participants.

Much smaller, but not dissimilar responses were received from the non-participant group.

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4.3.19 Summary of household survey findings

The programme has been extremely successful in improving the livelihood status ofhouseholds in terms of positive changes in assets, income, nutrition, access to health andeducation services, levels of economic activity and social capital. The followingconclusions can confidently be drawn from this survey

Very significant increases in asset levels have been experienced by the participantgroup, sufficient to lift the majority two wealth categories and firmly into the middleclasses in their communities. The non-participant control-group appears to beremaining static or losing ground. Across nearly all factors studies this pattern heldtrue, indicating that the non-participant control group in the targeted communities arein slow economic and social decline, while the participant group has not only stabilisedits economic and social fortunes, but achieved middle-class status.

Savings: while there has been increased participation in all forms of savings by theparticipant groups and reduced participation by the control group, the rate of savings intraditional Iqqubs is very significantly higher, indicating a strong preference fortraditional systems. Savings mobilisation rates in womens groups and cooperatives

are extremely low, and are seen more as subscriptions needed to access credit thansavings.

Credit: Dramatic reduction in dependence on money-lenders and family and strongpreference for community-based systems of credit access. Increased dependence onfamily and moneylenders amongst non-participants

Childrens education. Much higher levels of participation in the 95% range, althoughthis may disguise a de facto demand for female child labour in the household and IGAsand lower actual amounts of time spent in school by girls. Non participant enrolmentrates have risen but to a much lesser extent

Nutrition: More meals per day are being eaten and a greater variety of food consumed

Medical services are generally considered to be more affordable by the participant

group; less so for the non-participants. Overall physical access has improved. Participants have dramatically increased their investment of time and capital in IGAs.

Non-participants have slightly reduced their participation rate

Both male and female labour invested in IGAs has increased for participants,particularly for women, 100% of whom now carry out some form of IGA. The non-participant group either invest similar or decreased amounts of labour.

There is a rising trend towards migrant labour, nearly always affecting men. It is morepronounced amongst participant families than non-participant families and may be anunintended consequence of improved access to credit, making the search for work indistant places an affordable proposition. This hypothesis needs to be more closelyexamined, because it affects about 1/3 of participant households and 20% of non-participants

85% of participants report improved social status, mainly in terms of ability toparticipate in social for a. Only 25% of non-participants make the same claim.Changes in status were largely attributed to access to training, credit, awareness ofrights and asset (goat) transfer

Household-level decision-making has substantially devolved away from the maletowards the family as a whole. This trend is also evident amongst the non-participants, but much less pronounced

HIV/AIDS awareness is high amongst both participants and non-participants andderived from a multitude of readily accessible sources

The time burden of female participants has increased dramatically in terms of IGAmanagement and the time spent in group activities. The one may be regarded as

positive (IGA time investment) the time spent in group activities may be negative,especially as groups become cooperatives and demand more of their members time

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The most valued services are training, savings and credit, goat rearing and legaleducation. The least valued are literacy and HIV/AIDS education.

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5 Programme evaluation

5.1 Service provider performance

By service provider we mean the constituent womens groups that operate independently,

and those that are amalgamated into larger-scale cooperatives that have legal personality.We visited eight womens groups and four cooperatives in the two zones.3 In each casethe team divided, with one member analysing financial performance, the quality and costof services delivered and potential for institutional and financial sustainability. Thisinvolved structured interviews with the management committee of either the particularwomens group or cooperative. The second team member sat with 15 members of thegroup or cooperative, selected by the general assembly as being generally representativeof the membership.

5.2 Institutional capacity

The framework used in carrying out these analyses was broadly similar for groups and

cooperatives and covered the following: Goals and objectives of the group or cooperative

Sustainability of financial products (savings and credit)

Systems and administrative capacity

Costs and timelines

Appropriateness of womens groups and cooperatives vis--vis member goals,capacity and the operating environment

5.2.1 Goals and objectives

Most respondents were clear about the benefits of membership of both groups andcooperatives, but less so about their goals. Most mentioned by respondents was the

provision of savings and credit services as the core activity of the group, with credit beingclearly at the heart of their preoccupations. Very few comments were made about thevalue of savings services, and continued probing made it clear that most groups andcooperative members look on savings as a nominal asset with very little near-term or evenlong-term value, except in providing access to loans that are offered as a multiple of thevalue of member savings.

Group goals were consistent across all groups and cooperatives interviewed, but eitherunrealistic or vague. Typical goals for a group are:

To become a cooperative

To acquire an office building

To be registered

To start a common economic activity, usually either a grain mill or retail store

Typical goals for a cooperative are:

To start a common economic activity, usually either a grain mill or retail store

To expand lending activities

Bearing in mind the painfully limited growth of total equity and the overwhelming nature ofsubsidy (buildings, donations to loan funds, not to mention the asset transfer livestockprogramme), ambitions to acquire a grain mill or start a retail store of any usefulmagnitude are unrealistic and mere aspirations. This is not to belittle the value of these

3 The apparent bias towards womens groups was deliberate. The womens groups are the

foundation stone of the entire programme and the team felt it necessary to examine the experienceof the womens groups and discover to what extent the services on offer differed from those ofcooperatives. We were also interested to discover to what extent the presumptions of how thingswere done were common to both types of organisation and from where they were derived.

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services, which are obviously felt to be important by a majority of respondents, but there isno evidence that serious examination of capital required, sources of finance, marketdemand, technology, skill requirements and potential returns has taken place. At thepresent rate of effective decapitalisation (to be discussed in more detail later) these areunrealistic ambitions. Grain storage, practiced by many individuals might be a reasonableway to begin, involving as it does the least investment of financial capital, labour,technology, time and administration, but it seems that the tradition of conspicuous subsidyhas led to conspicuous expectations about diversified economic activities that arepresently beyond the reach of the groups both in terms of financial and human resourcecapacity

5.2.2 Appropriateness of financial products

There is very little doubt that savings and credit services are highly valued by the targetgroup. Asset protection through savings and insurance and the ability to captureinvestment and consumption opportunities depends absolutely on financial services that,according to Stuart Rutherford, have the following characteristics:4

Products that enable the poor to save and their needs for access to useful lump sumsso that they can:

Save (or repay loans) in small sums of varied value as frequently as possible

Access lump sums (through withdrawals or loans) when they need them

Product delivery systems that are convenient for the poor and

Are local, frequent, quick and affordable

Are not burdened with paperwork and other transaction costs

Are transparent in a way that is easy for illiterate people to grasp

Institutions adapted to delivering good products are those that are:

Committed to serving the poor

Cost effective

Exist in an environment that is healthy for pro-poor financial services. This requires A stable macro-economic environment

The rule of law

Enabling rather than restrictive legislation governing promoters and providers offinancial services for the poor.

The evaluators concluded, however, that WEDP has been unable to facilitate services thatsatisfy more than one, or at most two, of the preceding conditions.

Since WEDP has met or exceeded nearly all of its targets how can this assertion be trueand why does it matter?

WEDP has committed itself, rightly, to the notion of community-based and community-

managed financial services. There is ample evidence that this is the best choice for thevery poor, since banks and registered MFIs cannot afford the outreach costs (because thedemand for credit is inherently limited and the capacity to save constrained by very lowlevels of disposable income). The initial choice of delivery channel womens groups was also sensible. But the decision to create womens groups as a necessary first step increating cooperatives appears to have been mistake. It was not the purpose of the projectto create cooperatives. It was the purpose of the project to ensure that the poorestmembers of Ethiopian society are able to access suitable financial services with theminimum of cost and fuss. The choice of a cooperative instrument as a long-term goalwas built on a presumption that because this was the preference of the government, it wasboth natural and required. Neither is the true.

The following are the consequences of this decision:

4 The Poor and their Money: Stuart Rutherford, DFID and Oxford University Press, 2000

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While in some cases savings are variable (i.e. people can save in different amounts)by and large they do not. They save a fixed minimum amount only

Savings cannot be withdrawn. It is a fundamental principle of savings that thedepositor can access them at any time. While there is nothing in cooperative law thatprohibits this, the project has created a belief that a policy is in place, enshrined in law,

that limits the right of members to withdraw their savings, unless they leave the group.This is not to be confused with share purchase, which is normally not accessible whena cooperative is formed. As it now stands, members have no rights to withdraw eithersavings or shares. This entirely negates the purpose of savings and it is evident thatmembers are fully aware of this, reflected in a savings rate that is extremely low whencompared to the deposits freely contributed to Iqqub.

Loans are disbursed for a fixed six month period of time, on the same day. This is aresult of the decision to form cooperatives. Because cooperative officers from theKebele or Zone cannot visit the cooperatives more than twice a year, the project hasdecided that loans should be only issued at the time that they are available. Thisdefeats the purpose of a loan fund. A loan is needed for a myriad of purposes, someof which may indeed coincide with the disbursement cycle prescribed by the project,

but most of which do not. Many members claim that since the need for credit isstrongly influenced by seasonal events, the disbursement every six months neatlymatches this cyclical demand. This is not true, because many groups do not disburseevery six months. While loans may last for 6 months there is usually a one to twomonth delay before the disbursement of new loans, caused by the need to collect fromdelinquent players and a loan application process that can take up to two months andis not less than one month.

The loan application and disbursement process is cumbersome and bureaucratic. Itoccupies 13 separate steps and requires thatborrowers sign their names times on 6 separatedocuments, and gather the signatures of 3

guarantors. Meetings take an excessive amount of time.

Because it is not allowed by law to have morethan one savings and credit cooperative perKebele, people are having to walk longerdistances to meetings than they did as membersof a womens group. In addition, because asmany as 6-7 groups may form a cooperative,and, crucially, because all savings and loantransactions are carried out on the same day andin the same place, savings meetings lastbetween 2-3 hours and credit meetings take up

the whole day, right until the evening. Onaverage, the time taken for cooperative meetings is about 3 times longer than the timeoccupied by the same type of meeting in a womens group.

Because cooperative meetings involve somany people and because the transactionsare so complex, there is very littletransparency. We uncovered no evidenceof malfeasance (quite the opposite in fact),but meetings take a very long time, operatewith no clear procedure and seem quitechaotic. Money flows in ways that appearhaphazard to the uninitiated outsider andthere is neither clarity about disbursementnor repayment procedures, leaving the door

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wide open to mismanagement of members funds. In one particularly egregious case,shown on the left, male members of the community intruded themselves into the

meeting and took over money-counting activities to theobvious discomfort of the women leaders.

Dependency. The more the womens group take on the

style and operating procedures of cooperatives, the morethey appear to cede administrative control to outsiders,either male observers or male accountants. As they try tograpple with the complexities of the administrative systemsthat are required under cooperative law, the more theyprefer to hire educated outsiders to manage their booksand manage their savings and credit procedures. It shouldbe stressed that where we observed this happening, themen involved appeared to be doing their jobs correctly andin as open a fashion as the circumstances allowed. But the

fact of the matter was that as the womens groups became cooperatives they wereless in control of their affairs and felt themselves to be in need of external technicalsupport either in the form of a paid book-keeper, or in the form of the Kebele DAfrom the Ministry of Agriculture who was also, inevitably, male. The irony of thissituation was that the external book-keepers were of mixed quality, and werethemselves, apparently, unable to maintain the full set of accounts that are statutorilyrequired by cooperative law. Like the womenthemselves, they were able (with difficulty) tomaintain the member passbooks, ledgercards and payment vouchers, but more orless ignored the journals and ledgers and didnot attempt to produce any sort of financialstatement or report. In other words they

added very little value, but steadilyundermined the womens ability to takecharge of their own affairs

Dependency has an additional, pernicious,dimension. Every single cooperative andwomens group we visited had the same terms and conditions for savings and lending(which are highly inappropriate) and very similar rates of interest charged on loans(which, in purchasing-power parity terms are actually negative). Women stated that allof this arose out of their own decisions, but it is clear that it is heavily influenced bywhat have become cooperative norms. Field Assistants from WEDP and DevelopmentAssistants from the Ministry of Agriculture sing from the same hymn sheet and theirrecommendations take on the character of policy, which the women are extremely lothto challenge. There is, obviously, no real sense of ownership of their assets and nosense at all they are free to control them and evolve policies that suit their individualcircumstances. What WEDP has created is an instrument for the delivery of subsidy tothe poor, the most important of which are cheap loans, goats and a rather unattractive,cavernous, building that stands empty and unused for all but a single day per month.This is not in itself bad, but subsidy has several effects:

It disguises the real financial performance of the groups

It represses savings mobilisation

It reduces a genuine feeling of having achieved success on ones own terms andwith ones own effort

It is, also, entirely unnecessaryWhile a good case can be made for giving away goats (they are not loans) thesubsidies provided to womens groups and cooperatives in the form of up-front loan-

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fund capitalisation and building construction have the effect of reducing autonomy;force the groups towards an inappropriate, rigid and dysfunctional financial servicemethodology and, most alarmingly, disguise losses.

Losses. The groups and the cooperatives are losing money. There are two mainreasons for this:

Interest rates are below the rate of inflation A very high proportion of performing assets invested in the loan funds lie idle

The rate of inflation in Ethiopia is estimated to lie between 12-15%. The annual rate ofinterest charged on loans is at or below that rate. While there is nominal growth of theloan fund, the discounted value shows that asset levels are either static or declining.The following table shows an analysis of all of the groups and cooperatives visited.We have averaged performance for the groups and averaged performance for thecooperatives.

Figure 6: Comparison of financial performance: Groups and cooperatives.

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The difference between the groups and the cooperatives appear stark, with muchstronger equity and profit levels for the cooperatives. But this is misleading. First ofall, the cooperatives evolved out of groups and have been in operation an average4.65 years, compared to the groups that are not yet cooperatives, which have beenoperating for an average of 2.04 years. Secondly, cooperatives are comprised ofnearly 4 times as many members and have received nearly 4 times the amount ofsubsidy in their loan funds. Nevertheless, they are much more profitable (1,048compared to $12.6). This has to do with the fact that the longer members participatein groups and cooperatives, the more likely they are to take out loans. 57% ofcooperative members have active loans compared to 28.9% for the groups. Theaverage loan size is, moreover, larger for cooperative members. This has to do withgrowing confidence, over time, that members can take out loans and make profitableinvestments.

Having said this, and when a discounting factor of 10% is applied to performing assetvalues, the cumulative adjusted net profit for the groups turns negative at -259.4 forgroups and -5.4 for cooperatives.

The reason why this isnt clear to members is that the very large amount of donatedequity to loan funds and nominal profitability appears to show that groups are gettingbetter off, when in fact, in terms of purchasing power parity, they are worse off. Thus,the excess liquidity lying idle in unused loan funds creates a false sense of successand prosperity.

Another contributing factor, the evaluation team believes, is that members do not seemto feel a real sense of control and ownership of their cooperatives and groups(although they value participation). They look on them as mechanisms that providesthem with access to subsidy and cheap loans, but they have very little motivation tomake them profitable and to provide a competitive return on equity because themanner in which the cooperatives and groups operate is externally prescribed andthere is no important financial payoff that accrues to the individual members.

Finally, the dropout rate for cooperatives, at 9%, is almost double that of groups, whichhave lost an average of 5.5% of their members. This may, however reflect the factthat members in cooperatives have been working together for more than double thetime of the average group..

5.2.3 Comparison with what others are doing

Why are we so emphatic about the inappropriateness of groups and cooperatives as theyare currently structured, and why do we believe that subsidy is corrupting and simply notneeded?

All development is involved in subsidy: programmes are created to make good things

happen that would otherwise not occur unless someone paid for them. But this should beat the level of organisations (such as Farm Africa, or government) that facilitate changeand charge donors a fee to do so. Its a business, and the buyer is the donor. As such itis not so much a question of subsidy as a fee for service. When it comes to communitygroups this cant be the case, because subsidy reduces the need to focus on what it takesto make things sustainable, once the donor pulls out. Asset transfer to members is asubsidy and increasingly this is seen by donors to be an effective way of put people in theway of economic and social capital that secures their livelihoods. It is usually centredaround some type of livestock. As a kick-start it is increasingly popular with donors andlooks like being an effective way to lift people to the bottom rung of the economic ladder.As such, however, it needs to be separated out from activities that depend onautonomous, self-managed community organisations to survive and grow on their own.

In Ethiopia, CARE International works with womens savings and credit groups, all overthe country. These groups average only 15 members (to ensure solidarity and the ability

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of each member to understand what is being done in their name and how it is being done in other words to facilitate transparency). These groups mobilise and manage anaverage of 1,000 each, capitalised solely by their own savings. They decide on loanterms and conditions; they decide on interest rates and, crucially, they share out theaccumulated savings and interest earned at the end of the year in proportion toshareholding. They have not received a penny of external loan-fund subsidy and provideeach member with an average of 30% return on their savings annually. The cost permember is below $30. Compare this with Farm Africas groups and cooperatives.

Figure 7: Comparison of returns, costs and scale: CARE VSL programme and WEDPssavings and credit programme

These differences are stark. Not only are members of CAREs groups enjoyingsignificantly higher returns in percentage and absolute terms, but the cost to CARE isabout 13% the cost to WEDP to offer community-managed financial services. What arethe reasons for the difference? They may be summarised as follows:

CAREs groups are small, averaging only 13 members. This keeps meetings shortand allows people to witness what is going on and to be fully aware of the financialposition of the group at any time.

CARE provides no subsidy, so members are aware that whatever they want to borrowhas to come from what they save: this encourages higher rates of savings andvigilance when it comes to repayment and money-management in general.

Members have access to their savings. In some cases on demand but always at theend of an agreed-upon cycle that never exceeds a year. Thus, they are inclined tosave more because they know they can get the money back. In neither the womensgroups nor the cooperatives is this the case. Indeed, it was striking that in no case ofany group interviewed had members ever discussed how or if they might be able toaccess their savings.

Members can save in variable amounts. This optimises savings mobilisation. Whilethis is nominally the case with WEDP, most members save the same amount because,we believe, it is seen as a minimum subscription fee rather than savings, to which

members have access. Loans are offered on terms that are decided by members, not, as in the case of

WEDP, by a committee that does not have to explain itself to the membership. Thisrelates to how much a borrower can receive; if they are properly qualified to undertakethe economic activity (or in need); the length of loan term; the amount of interest and,crucially, how the loan is paid back. This is at the entire discretion of the member andallows a borrower to reimburse as and when cash becomes available (in rural areasthis may be quite predictable, but is usually irregular). So long as a loan is paid backwithin the agreed-upon length of time and with an appropriate amount of interest linkedto the loan term, how it is paid back depends on the particular circumstances of theindividual borrower

The CARE programme uses extremely simple methods of recording transactions,based mainly on member passbooks and on a process of witness and groupconsensus rather than written records. This drastically reduces the length of time

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far too great a store on legal establishment without being able to articulate convincingreasons why this matters.5

The move towards cooperatives and away from small-scale groups means that a muchgreater amount of time is needed to participate, because it takes a long time to reachthe venue and the much greater number of regular transactions takes far longer to

complete. Other approaches that are widespread in Ethiopia and operated at much lower cost

appear to lead to much greater levels of savings mobilisation, much higher returns oncapital and much lower cost per participant. They should be studied with a view toreconsidering, radically, the institutional development design.

What the team ended up concluding was that while asset transfer, the provision of loans,the training in small business management and increased awareness of womens rightshad led to extraordinary and positive changes in the lives of participants and their families,the institutional mechanisms chosen were inappropriate and skewed from the start by afalse presumption that cooperatives were the necessary way to make it all happen. Thesame results have been seen in other countries, with far few inputs and at much lower

cost.

6

The decision to become a cooperative, or not, should be truly open-ended and should notbe marketed as an inevitable outcome. The project should, instead, focus on creatingeffective and autonomous savings and credit groups that are much more local and smallerscale and whose systems and procedures are based solely on meeting the membersneeds for accessible, transparent, low-cost, profitable, flexible and safe financial services.The decision to become a cooperative involves a massive change in scale, technologyand complexity and requires long-term engagement with the Ministry of AgriculturesDevelopment Assistants. This is something that the project should no longer subsidise orfacilitate, beyond making it clear what it costs and creating relationships between thegroups and competent specialists in government who can carry the process forward.WEDP should not take on this burden, because it costs too much and reaches too few

people.

Apart from consideration of re-thinking the institutional delivery-channel issues, the teamconcluded that WEDP should separate out the savings and credit activities from activitiesrelated to the use of Community-based Legal Advisors (CBLAs) and also from assettransfer activities. This would allow a dedicated team, involving more people, to engagewith groups for a much shorter period of time and focus on expansion and growth, ratherthan working in lockstep to create cooperatives and facilitate collateral services. Another(and probably more important) reason for doing this is that it should be recognised thatcommunity-based financial services, based on local savings (and not external subsidy)self-target the poor. The better-off already have access to more choices in terms of howthey save and borrow, but community-managed microfinance is inherently attractive to the

poor, because they recognise its three key advantages: social support/reinforcement; thecapacity to protect assets and to adapt the supply of services to changing and oftenvolatile conditions. For this reason there is no need to engage in wealth-ranking or tryingto engineer services that are supplied only to a segment of the community (and that, bydefinition, exclude others). Community-based microfinance self-targets the poor on thebasis of demand: there is no need at all to allocate supply.

5 Registration as a cooperative is seen as a good in and of itself. The ability to sue and besued was cited, but is an improbable eventuality.6 Impact evaluations of CAREs Kupfuma Ishungu programme in Zimbabwe and its VSLprogramme in Malawi showed very similar livelihood outcomes, with a very limited number ofinterventions delivered at much lower cost than WEDP. These evaluations are provided as

supporting documents, accompanying this report. The basic point here is that much more can beleft to the people themselves in solving their problems, so long as the most critical interventions,capable of providing synergy, are in place. WEDP tries to do too much, for too long in too complexa way.

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For many of the same reasons WEDP should give consideration to opening up savingsand credit services to men. The rationale for working only with women is that pastinjustices can only be remedied by affirmative action. But there is plenty of evidence fromother countries that savings and credit services allocated only to women can, perversely,lead to increased discrimination. This can arise when men begin to feel resentment attheir exclusion and when, being excluded, they use their wives to apply for loans that are,in fact, used by men while the women have liability. There is also clear evidence fromother countries that when married partners have equal access to savings and creditservices, they both benefit and the family as a whole is better off. The type ofmethodology proposed (rather than sole support to cooperative membership) leads, in anycase, to a preponderance (usually about 70%) of female participants.

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6 Programme implementation

6.1 Effectiveness and efficiency of WEDP

Our analysis of the projects effectiveness and efficiency led us to examine the following:

Programme goals Staff/leadership capacity

Level of financial resources/sustainability

Planning Organisational structure

Systems (financial, HR, M&E)

Quality and nature of linkages to other organisations

6.1.1 Programme goals

There is indisputable evidence, already covered in the earlier parts of this report, thatproject goals have been achieved. This is true in terms of the number of womens

groups and cooperatives that have been created and the number of people who havebenefited from project services. While the project proposed to reach a total of 1,120women in 28 new groups and assist 450 women in 18 groups to form cooperatives, for atotal of 1,570, it has almost exactly reached that target (although the number of womenwho, in total, remain active in their groups and cooperatives is not known). The evidencein the field is that dropouts number no more than 5% in womens groups and 10% incooperatives, so it may be imputed that approximately 1,400 members are being servedat this time.

As already noted in section 4.3, the evaluators have concluded the following:

Incomes have increased substantially, inferred from the evidence of significantincreases in assets and expenditure on housing, education, food and health services

Women are more active in their communities and in community-based group activity Women feel more respected at home and in the wider community

Womens awareness of their rights is extraordinarily high and this awareness appearsto be shared by men

More children are in school and enrollment rates of girls and boys are uniformly high

Family nutrition has improved

6.1.2 Staff quality

Staff quality is mixed. There is evidence that in terms of the goat improvementprogramme and in terms of work related to legal awareness and womens rights, realexpertise was evident and a high degree of professionalism. This was evident in terms of

performance and results. Where supportive governmental structures existed the results ofthe goat improvement programme were considered by respondents to be excellent(although where this support was lacking in 2/3 of the project area the results wereless impressive, with a slow degeneration of the quality of the breeding stock, owing tocomplexities in the maintenance of the genetic supply chain of exotic bucks).

The CBLAs were widely regarded as providing excellent services, although on a voluntarybasis, which raises questions about their vulnerability and sustainability.

On the other hand the evaluators concluded that the quality of support to womens groupsand cooperatives was mixed. Since the project has direct and sole responsibility for theformation for womens groups (but shares the responsibility for the formation ofcooperatives with the Ministry of Agriculture), we looked more closely at how well thegroups had been trained and, in particular, how well they had been supervised as theyproceeded towards independent operation. In general the quality was inadequate. Most

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group meetings were rather aimless, with people wandering in and out and the focus ofattention of the management committee being on their written records, rather than themembers and the meeting itself. In not a single case was a group able to produce itswritten constitution, which was always at the Chairperson or Secretarys house. Inaddition, written records were inconsistently maintained between groups and errors oflong-standing went uncorrected, as the photographs below illustrate.

In the one case on the right, only payments have been shown with no specification ofinterest nor balance outstanding. In the other, differential rates of interest for differentperiods have been supplied. Other cases were seen where the balance outstanding wasnoted for a few payments and then abandoned and, again, interest charged at differentialrates that did not relate either to flat or declining balance repayment systems.

None of the journals, cash books or ledgers were either complete or correctly filled in andaudits carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture imputed profit only from balance sheetfigures, rather than constructing a balance sheet from a P&L and asset value source data.

None of this is surprising, because teaching and supervising accounting systems of this

complexity needs a trained book-keeper, and none of the staff who are doing the work arequalified in this area. This goes back again to questioning the appropriateness of themethodology. What is more disturbing is that while none of this was noticed by FAs, it hadnot been caught by the FA supervisor, which is a major omission. There is no point inhaving a methodology (however misguided) and then appointing staff who dontunderstand it and who are inadequately supervised.

Staff had (correctly) focussed on the basic source documents: passbooks, ledger cards(just a copy of passbook entries) and payment vouchers, and in general the data(especially the savings data) was fairly reliable. Where it fell apart was in accuratelyassessing balances of loans outstanding after disbursement and carrying the aggregatedsummary data to journals and ledgers, sufficient to produce a trial balance, P&L and

balance sheet. This underscores not so much the weakness of staff, but a seriousmismatch between the demands of the methodology relative to participant and staffcapacity.

Staff can easily be trained in creating effective savings and credit groups, but two thingsneed to be changed:

Staff need to be supervised: right now supervision seems mainly to consist of receivingreports and developing action plans. Supervision consists of having a clear andconsistently applied methodology, and then making sure that the methodology isconsistently taught and supervised. At the present time there is insufficient consistency(and consensus) concerning the technical approach and too much emphasis on datacollection rather than the quality of that data.

The methodology needs to be simplified. There is simply no need for this type of targetgroup to be saddled with systems that make them permanently dependent onprofessional support.

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6.1.3 Level of financial resources

As already noted, the amount of subsidy in terms of money flowing into the loan funds ismore than sufficient to support the current level of demand for loans. It is, in fact, over-sufficient since it represses savings mobilisation. Overall the amount of money allocated

to the project is vastly greater than needed for the scale of outputs envisaged andachieved. Figure 8 below displays the cost of the overall programme, disaggregated byprogramme component.

Figure 8: WEDP Expenditure analysis, disaggregated by output

This analysis indicates that the total expenditure to date is 429,809, which computes toa cost per participant of 287 ($572). We have made conservative estimates of theoverall percentage of overhead that should be charged against savings and credit

activities, and come up with an estimate of 174,956, or 117 ($233) per participant.

This latter figure needs to be borne in mind when remembering that it has taken this levelof expenditure for the average cooperative member (of those visited) to save 8 over a4.7 year p

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FARM-Africa WEDP End of Project Evaluation 2008

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