Helping People Help Myself

When you find yourself in a situation with a lot of problems inherited from a previous person, what do you do? Most of the projects I visit have many current and historical problems - that's why I go to fields, i.e. trouble-shooting! (although I highlighted more positive aspects in previous posts and some were different projects)

To answer the question above, you need to understand deeply the structure of problems and their logical relationships while analyzing chains of actions led by initial or fundamental issues. So, I started with talking with people. The below shows the project team meeting scene where there is "no internet connection", "no air conditioning" and "no space" for staff!! It was so hot but we spent about 3 hours to analyze the situation as a first step. (these are new staff by the way, as explained below. I'm sure you'll cry if you start your first day of your new job in this room or simply don't show up at office following day!!) 

Once I understood the problems and logical as well as historical relationships of the pile of issues (from a view of project staff), I prepared my notes with some key questions to ask with counter parts, mainly government officials. Meeting some government officials across ministries always help me to understand their capacities and the degree of internal politics. Some of my hypotheses were confirmed and left some more questions which needed to be verified during the field trips in districts. 

This is my very personal thought but finding genuinely good people (including govt officials) is one of key elements to make any development project successful. Another key element us to recruit competent and trustworthy team members. The latter was obviously failed in this project and here we restructured the team last year and new staff joined. Although the past details were found to be scattered in pieces at best, not many visible work was done due to the funding suspension till 2011 September. I found it seriously pity that the project was dysfunctional over the 2 years in spite of tremendous opportunities on the ground to help those trying to rehabilitate the damaged rice field and irrigation channels abandoned during the decade-long war in Sierra Leone. Why on earth millions dollars need to sit on a bank account while observing enormous needs of poor farmers. In my view, these didn't provide minimum work should be punished to compensate the opportunities lost during the period. Anyway, I took it positive chance to do more than the past. 

We reviewed the work plan, identify bottlenecks, developed risk management plans along with several risk mitigation measures. Given the multiple uncertainties including timeliness of local contractors, payment timing of government fund, period of rainy season and even performance of small farmers groups to mobilize local people to collaborate with the project, we had to discuss deeply and extensively various scenarios to be well-prepared to achieve targets. The past simply ignored dynamics and these risks, and consequently the lazy good intention didn't turn into good results. In spite of different project team members, we cannot repeat any negligence of the past because we don't have any more time to revamp the project which is  finishing by end of next year while more than 60% of 5 year project left for the remaining 17 months.

Adding more challenges, the project was designed to work with other ministries who are supposed to implement some activities and monitor progress. For example, the Ministry of Works is responsible to complete the physical rehabilitation of some facilities at selected agriculture research institutions who are, in turn, helping rice variety selection and dissemination of NERICA rice seeds that have higher yield than indigenous varieties. The Ministry; however didn't show a sense of responsibility nor passion to contribute to the objectives of the project. It was, therefore, required to use multiple channels of communication to ensure the proper and timely work to be carried out by the Ministry. 

1: Convincing Ministry of Finance to send an official request to Ministry of Works

2: Leveraging  the personnel relationship of Minister of Agriculture with some people at Ministry of Works

3: Using as much as possible the project's staff network with some other people at Ministry  etc

This is a merely a piece of illustration but it is a necessary risk mitigation to achieve intended goals although it sounds like merely a part of project's daily work. That's why we had to spend so much time to identify risks and develop mitigation approaches (not one but a few) for each activity. It was also part of capacity development for project staff who were newly joined this year.

It's not a rocket science, nevertheless,  bringing about tangible results on the ground doesn't happen automatically by just sending letters to governments - you need to work with government officials and with their systems regardless of their level of competencies and efficiencies. Very frequently you find yourself so frustrated and wish less troubles.

To mention some aspects of this project ( agriculture rural rehabilitation project), it aims at constructing/rehabilitating irrigation channels, development of low land (many places are swamp in rural areas of Sierra Leone), diversifying crops including cash crops, building institutional capacities of research institutions and develop farmer groups etc.
If the project goes well, it will rehabilitate 12,000ha of low land/swamp and 8000 abandoned smallholder oil palm, cocoa and coffee as well as 410km feeder roads,  increase rice yield up to 2.5t/ha , renovate agricultural facilities/buildings, construct marketing/drying/processing facilities, train farmers and establish 2000 farmer groups and 20,000 farm households.

Apparently Sierra Leone's agriculture sector needs more development than the above targets; however, these will be great steps to move forward and give more hopes to poor farmers in the post-conflict county. The above farmer group convinced me they'll be a good team and will be successful farmer's group. You know why? They asked me very good questions showing their passion and keen interest to develop their lands, improve plotting system, more effectively utilize fertilizer and pesticides, choose better NERICA varieties (there are 19 varieties as of August 2011 available in the country) and even they asked me how to compare growing stages of rice varieties and to test resistance/characteristics for various climate conditions (heat/drought/humidity etc). I appreciated my university professors who taught me all of these things!! (but sorry I didn't remember all of them......)     

You can see some post-war realities from the pictures below (only buildings) because I couldn't take pictures of people who lost their arms and legs....too painful to even give a glance when giving some money.... (you can see many of them in Freetown) 

NERICA (New Rice for Africa) became well-known in Sierra Leone partially due to the Project funded by African Development Bank. The project collaborated with Ministry of Agriculture and Technical Agency (Sierra Leone Agriculture Research Institute: SRARI) to produce more NERICA seeds, demonstrate cultivation process and yields compared to other varieties, provide extension services, support land development and provide subsidized inputs as initial boost for income increase which will lead to graduation from subsidies in next cultivation cycle.

In fact, it was West Africa where NERICA was created by WARDA (West Africa Rice Development Association *). So far, tons of NERICA seeds were produced and disseminated to farmers along with other inputs and equipment. 

The Supervision Team and some project staff visited some demonstration sites and rice fields where we could interact with local farmers and discuss progress as well as remaining challenges.

Great awareness of NERICA as higher yield variety was clearly observed across districts and villages. Line planting, a better planting methodology became more common even among very poor farmers. Farmers groups and farmers associations were expanding and improving their functions although some of them are still new and need to  learn from matured groups.

Land development and scaling up found to be unbeaten challenges. These required adequate equipment, skills, knowledge, business plans and affordable financing options. 

One private firm was passionately tackling and gradually overcoming these challenges, which gave me an inspiration and great hope for Sierra Leone's future. The below picture shows you the very different scale than the above ones. Actually, the improved yield of above farmers are 1.6-1.8 ton/ha while the primitive farmers remain 1-1.3t/ha. Now how much yield this company gets? It's about 4.2 t/ha without fertilizer and 7.6t/ha with fertilizer. So, this is the potential of Sierra Leone agriculture. We should invest more in agriculture sector in Sierra Leone and help small farmers to shift towards large scale farming.