Factors influencing success of donor funded pastoral projects in the Sahel.

Abstract

Most livestock and range management projects in the Sahelian countries of Africa have failed to achieve their objectives. Many reasons have been given to explain the failure, but these reasons usually fall short of covering the whole environmental picture and concentrate on the factors internal to the projects. They do not provide complete explanations of why pastoral programs fail because they tend to over-emphasize the isolation of pastoral communities from their wider societies and do not take into consideration the whole socio-economic and political environment. The purpose of this study was to more constructively explain why pastoral development projects succeed or fail. Pastoral projects funded by World Bank and USAID in six Sahelian countries of Africa were studied. Metaevaluation was used to study all of the factors affecting the outcome of pastoral projects. A survey of project evaluators and summaries of project reports and evaluation activities were used as the main sources of data. The results indicate that outcomes of pastoral projects do depend upon the technological, sociocultural, and environmental dimensions of the development situation. But the outcomes are more affected by the policies of governments and their institutions than by any other factor. Factors such as uncertain funding, conflicting goals and objectives, and complicated bureaucratic procedures, generally mean that projects are not implemented as planned, changes are made as the projects are implemented, or implementation never occurs.