Bank’s Support for Agricultural The African...

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The African Development Bank’s Support for Agricultural

Value Chains Development: Lessons for the Feed Africa Strategy

Summary Report

March 2018

IDEV conducts different types of evaluations to achieve its

strategic objectives

Thematic Evaluation Project Cluster Evaluations

Regional Integration Stra

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Project Perfo

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(Public Secto

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Project Performance Evaluations

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Evaluation Syntheses

Corporate Evaluations

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Thematic Evaluations

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The African Development Bank’s Support for Agricultural

Value Chains Development: Lessons for the Feed Africa Strategy

Summary Report

March 2018

© 2018 African Development Bank Group All rights reserved – Published March 2018

The African Development Bank’s Support for Agricultural Value Chains Development: Lessons for the Feed Africa Strategy – Summary Report IDEV Thematic Evaluation, March 2018

Disclaimer

Unless expressly stated otherwise, the findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this publication are those of the various authors of the publication and are not necessarily those of the Management of the African Development Bank (the “Bank”) and the African Development Fund (the “Fund”), Boards of Directors, Boards of Governors or the countries they represent.

Use of this publication is at the reader’s sole risk. The content of this publication is provided without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including without limitation warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non- infringement of third-party rights. The Bank specifically does not make any warranties or representations as to the accuracy, completeness, reliability or current validity of any information contained in the publication. Under no circumstances including, but not limited to, negligence, shall the Bank be liable for any loss, damage, liability or expense incurred or suffered which is claimed to result directly or indirectly from use of this publication or reliance on its content.

This publication may contain advice, opinions, and statements of various information and content providers. The Bank does not represent or endorse the accuracy, completeness, reliability or current validity of any advice, opinion, statement or other information provided by any information or content provider or other person or entity. Reliance upon any such opinion, advice, statement, or other information shall also be at the reader’s own risk.

About the AfDB

The overarching objective of the African Development Bank Group is to spur sustainable economic development and social progress in its regional member countries (RMCs), thus contributing to poverty reduction. The Bank Group achieves this objective by mobilizing and allocating resources for investment in RMCs and providing policy advice and technical assistance to support development efforts.

About Independent Development Evaluation (IDEV)

The mission of Independent Development Evaluation at the AfDB is to enhance the development effectiveness of the institution in its regional member countries through independent and instrumental evaluations and partnerships for sharing knowledge.

Independent Development Evaluation (IDEV) African Development Bank GroupAvenue Joseph Anoma, 01 BP 1387 Abidjan 01, Côte d'IvoirePhone: +225 20 26 20 41 E-mail: [email protected] idev.afdb.org

Design & layout: CRÉON – www.creondesign.net

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Task manager: Girma Earo Kumbi, Principal Evaluation Officer

Team member: Eleonora Fornai, Consultant

Consultants: Aide à la Décision Economique (ADE) s.a. Belgium (country case studies), Dorothy Lucks (Literature review, Policy review, Inception report and Technical report)

External peer reviewers: Hubert Paulmer and Dorothy Lucks (country case studies)

Knowledge management officers: Jayne Musumba, Principal Knowledge Management Officer, and Aminata Kouma, Junior Consultant Knowledge Management and Communications

Other assistance/contributions provided by: Anasthasie B. Gomez Sokoba, Team Assistant

Special thanks to: Bank staff in various departments (Agriculture and Agro-Industry; Agricultural Finance and Rural Development; Human and Social Development; Private Sector Development; Financial Sector Development; Gender, Women and Civil Society) and Bank Country Team members of the nine countries where case studies were conducted, for their comments and contributions during the evaluation processes.Staff of public and private sector institutions as well as development partners for their time for interviews and for arranging site visits.

Division manager: Madhusoodhanan Mampuzhasseril (OIC)

Evaluator General: Rakesh Nangia

Acknowledgments iiAbbreviations and Acronyms vExecutive Summary viiiManagement Response 4

Introduction 17Evaluation Scope, Objective and Questions 17Evaluation Approach and Methods 17Limitations and Challenges of the Evaluation 18

Background and Definitions 21Agricultural Development in Africa 21Agricultural Value Chain: Definitions 22

What has the Bank Done in Agriculture (2005–2016)? 24The Bank’s Strategic Approach to Agriculture 24The Bank’s Portfolio 25

Success Factors: The Theory of Change for Agricultural Value Chains Development 29

Has the Bank Applied Good Practice Standards in Agricultural Value Chains Development? 33

Designing and Implementing Operations with a Value Chains Focus 33Strategizing for Inclusiveness 36Planning for Sustained Impact 38Delivering Key Enablers 40

Conclusions and Recommendations 49

Annexes 55

Contents

Contents

List of figuresFigure 1 Overview of the 9 selected case study countries and commodity value chains 18Figure 2 Food production per capita in Africa, Asia and South America 21Figure 3 Three approaches to agricultural value chain development 23Figure 4 Annual net commitments and number of interventions (2005-2016) 25Figure 5 Proportion of agricultural value chain related interventions by year, 2005–2010

(N=67) compared with 2011-2016 (N=93) 26Figure 6 Feed Africa visions of success for commodity value chains 29Figure 7 Sub-Saharan African countries rank low on Enable the Business of Agriculture (EBA),

though better than South Asia 42

List of boxesBox 1 Definition of terms 22Box 2 Zambia – Cashew nut value chains 34Box 3 Kenya – Tomato value chains 36Box 4 Inclusiveness in value chains 37Box 5 Agricultural value chains offers varies opportunities for women and youth 39Box 6 Cassava processing in Liberia 43Box 7 Mozambique: Access to credit in rice value chain 45

List of tablesTable 1 Limitations of the evaluation and their means of mitigation 19Table 2 AVCD fundamentals and enablers 30Table 3 Evidence of AVCD fundamentals and enablers in country case studies 34

vAbbreviations and Acronyms

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Abbreviations and Acronyms

AfDB African Development Bank Group AgSS Agriculture Sector StrategyARD Agriculture and Resource Development AsDB Asian Development BankAU African Union AVC Agricultural Value ChainAVCD Agricultural Value Chains DevelopmentBLICRP Baixa and Limpopo Irrigation and Climate

Resilience ProjectCAADP Comprehensive Africa Agriculture

Development ProgrammeCGIAR Consultative Group for International

Agricultural ResearchCIDA Canadian International Development

AgencyCIDP Cashew infrastructure development

projectCSA Climate Smart AgricultureCSP Country Strategy Papers DANIDA Danish International Development AgencyDARMS Documents and Records Management

SystemDFAT Australian Department of Foreign Affairs

and TradeDFID United Kingdom Department for

International DevelopmentDRC Democratic Republic of CongoEQ Evaluation QuestionEU European UnionFAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the

United NationsFFS Farmer Field SchoolFGD Focus Group DiscussionsFO Farmers’ OrganizationsGDP Gross Domestic ProductGIZ German Corporation for International

Cooperation GmbHGVC Global Value Chain

ICT Information and Communications Technology

IDEV Independent Development EvaluationIFAD International Fund for Agricultural

Development IFPRI International Food Policy Research

InstituteIITA International Institute of Tropical

AgricultureISPs Institutional Support ProjectsKOSFIP Kimira-Oluch smallholder farm

improvement projectLEAF II Lakes Edward & Albert integrated

fisheries & water resourcesLIC Low Income Country LISP Rwanda livestock infrastructure support

programmeM&E Monitoring and Evaluation MCC Milk Collection CenterMFI Microfinance institutionMIC Middle Income Country MSMEs Micro, Small and Medium Sized

EnterprisesOECD Organization for Economic Co-operation

and DevelopmentPADEBL Dairy Cattle Development Support ProjectPADIR Rural infrastructure development support

projectPAIA-ID Agricultural infrastructure support project

in Indénié-Djuablin RegionPA-PMV Green Morocco plan support programmePA-PNEEI National irrigation water conservation

programme support projectPAR Project Appraisal ReportPBO Policy Based OperationPCR Project Completion ReportPVC Partial Value ChainRIPoS Regional Integration Policy and Strategy

vi The African Development Bank’s Support for Agricultural Value Chains Development: Lessons for the Feed Africa Strategy – Summary Report

RIS Regional Integration Strategy RMC Regional Member CountrySAP Systems, Applications and ProductsSAPEC Smallholder agricultural productivity

enhancement and commercialization project

SDGs Sustainable Development GoalsSFVC Sustainable Food Value ChainSIVAP Small scale irrigation and value addition

project

SME Small to Medium Sized EnterpriseSNV Netherlands Development OrganizationSUCDEN Agricultural commodities programmeToC Theory of ChangeToR Terms of ReferenceUSAID United States Agency for International

Development VC Value ChainVCD Value Chain Development WB World Bank

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viii The African Development Bank’s Support for Agricultural Value Chains Development: Lessons for the Feed Africa Strategy – Summary Report

Introduction

The Independent Development Evaluation (IDEV) of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB or the Bank) conducted an evaluation of Bank’s support for agricultural value chains development (AVCD) over the period 2005–2016, with a view to generating lessons and recommendations for supporting the implementation of the Bank’s Feed Africa Strategy. The objectives of the evaluation are to: i) assess the relevance, inclusiveness, effectiveness, and sustainability of the Bank’s support to value chains development; and ii) provide lessons and recommendations for the implementation and design of agricultural value chains interventions associated with the Feed Africa Strategy.

The evaluation is theory-based with a focus on learning. It takes a non-traditional approach in that it does not evaluate specific investments or operations, but rather aims to understand how the Bank’s operations have applied the AVCD theory of change in different contexts. It draws key lessons and proposes recommendations to assist the Bank in future programming.

The evaluation draws evidence from literature review, policy and strategy review, portfolio review and 9 country case studies. The country case studies were selected based on the priorities of the Feed Africa Strategy, regional representation, and balance in a range of target value chains by the Feed Africa Strategy. Interviews were conducted with relevant stakeholders both internally (at HQ and Country Offices) and externally with RMC governments and development partners. The field missions held focus group discussions (FGD) and interviews — in the capital and project areas — with (i) producers, (ii) processors, (iii) traders (retailers, wholesalers, import or export companies), (iv) government

authorities concerned with the commodity (at national and local levels), (v) the Bank Country Team, (vi) the project team, and (vii) Development Partners. Detail of the evaluation approach and methodology are presented in Annex 1 and the evaluation matrix is shown in Annex 2.

The evaluation identified 5 fundamentals and 5 key enablers that characterize successful AVCD based on current knowledge and the Bank’s practice. The five fundamentals, critical factors for all Bank value chain interventions are: (i) analyze the full value chain; (ii) strategize for inclusiveness; (iii) remain responsive to market changes; (iv) think profitability with value addition; and (v) plan for sustained impact. Five other key elements that need to be present in relation to the needs of specific value chains to enable commercialization (termed “enablers”) are: (i) availability of appropriate infrastructure and ICT; (ii) conducive policy and regulatory environment; (iii) availability of appropriate business support; (iv) access to finance; and (v) private sector participation and linkages between VC actors. To generate relevant lessons, the Bank’s support was assessed in relation to these fundamentals and enablers.

Has the Bank Applied the Fundamentals and Delivered Key Enablers in Supporting the Agricultural Value Chains Development?

The Bank has a growing strategic focus and portfolio related to AVCD. The first mention of value chains in the Bank’s strategies are noted in its Ten-Year Strategy (2013–2022).1 There is an increasing use of AVCD terminology in recent country strategies and projects.2 However, the portfolio review found that there were earlier indications of an increasingly

Executive Summary

1Executive Summary

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commercially oriented and sustainable approach to agricultural development in the Bank’s operations.

To some extent, most of the fundamentals for AVCD are evident throughout the Bank’s interventions. However, all will require strengthening to achieve the intended outcomes of the Feed Africa Strategy via an AVCD approach. In particular, to increase relevance, greater focus could be given to generating a clear approach and guidance on how to incorporate AVCD features in project design, particularly in applying value chain analysis, focusing on responsiveness to markets, and profitability.

Although the Bank strategies demonstrated overarching intentions towards inclusiveness in AVCD, it is largely driven by pressure to attain quotas of young people and women in project interventions. The portfolio review found that 63% of the reviewed interventions (99 projects out of 160 interventions) within the agriculture portfolio had a design element to address the issue of inclusiveness in terms of gender, youth or other vulnerable groups. However, merely ensuring participation (e.g. by assigning quotas) is not enough to ensure that they benefit proportionally.

The literature review and case studies have demonstrated that without deliberate efforts, interventions are unlikely to be inclusive and have equitably distributed benefits. Therefore, in addition to strengthening efforts in AVCD analysis prior to investment, consideration needs to be given to how these investments will result in benefits to key target groups such as women, young people and other vulnerable groups. It is also necessary to address relations between stakeholders at a political level and particularly the difficult access to production factors (land, capital, water, etc.). The portfolio review found also that recent designs with a VCD approach clearly targeted youth group (e.g. “Agricultural Infrastructure and Youth Agribusiness Project” in Malawi and “Enable Youth Project” in Nigeria).

With respect to key enablers for AVCD, the assessment shows that the most effective support is in relation to infrastructure and in appropriate financing where it has been supported. The provision of hard infrastructure is widely accepted as one of the key enablers for AVCD and the Bank provided significant support in this area for increasing production and productivity. In all of the country case studies the Bank invested in irrigation, feeder/access roads, storage/collection centers, and market sheds. The Bank also achieved results by providing access to finance mainly to producers. For example, the Bank supported poor farmers in Rwanda through in-kind provision of improved cow breed.

However, there are gaps in key areas for improvement particularly in partnerships with the private sector, business development support and interventions in the policy and regulatory environment.

Sustainability is uncertain. The literature review highlighted the need to design interventions with sustainability of impact in mind. This requires understanding of the dynamism of market demand and hence a greater focus needs to be placed on resilience of producers and processors to respond to market needs. Another important aspect is the level of ownership and utilization of project outputs.

Insufficient ownership and limited functionality of facilities delivered were found to be constraints to sustainability. In various case studies, infrastructure facilities were not well planned and did not have the full support of the local producers or private sector actors. This led to facilities being underutilized with no clear sustainability mechanism in place (e.g. meat producing facilities in DRC and some milk collection centers (MCC) in Rwanda). Nevertheless, some positive results were seen in incorporating infrastructure maintenance into project facilities to ensure their ongoing use, as seen in the irrigation structures in Mozambique, Morocco and Kenya which will be managed through water users’ associations.

2 The African Development Bank’s Support for Agricultural Value Chains Development: Lessons for the Feed Africa Strategy – Summary Report

Although environmental impact assessments are conducted during intervention formulation, the case studies found that environmental sustainability of the Bank’s interventions remained a challenge with attention towards green growth, climate change mitigation or adaptation is still limited.

Recommendations

The evaluation proposes the following six main recommendations to strengthen the Bank’s approach to AVCD for the Feed Africa Strategy.

Recommendation 1: Build a coherent and consistent approach to AVCD across Bank operations.

An explicit AVCD approach, a common terminology, and a consistent set of fundamentals should be adopted within the Bank, and discussed/disseminated within the RMCs so as harmonize dialogues on VC approaches. The fundamentals and enablers proposed by the evaluation can be considered as a starting point. To complement and improve implementation of the Feed Africa Strategy, guidelines and an organization-wide capacity development program could be developed in line with the AVCD approach. There are a number of technical guidelines available for value chain analysis and development prepared by international development organizations, governments, and research institutions. These can form a useful basis for the Bank to develop its own practice for VC analysis. This should involve all Bank departments that play a role in supporting ACVD, with a clear vision on how integration at regional and national levels will occur in the context of specific value chains.

Recommendation 2: Build AVCD analytical and implementation capabilities.

Successful interventions in AVCD require that country program and project designs are based on

AVC analyses as part of their preparatory activities. This initial analysis should involve identification of the support required for the enabling environment and where interventions are required (by the Bank as well as partners). It will be important to include adequate resourcing in program and project budgets in early implementation to carry out the necessary analysis. At a minimum, this should include farming systems management requirements, technical production requirements for innovation and value addition, market assessment, and participatory stakeholder analysis. It is also important to incorporate processes and resources to allow for review of VC analyses during implementation to identify market dynamics and respond to changing contexts. The analyses need to be well understood and used by project implementers, which would require orientation and capacity development of key value chain actors.

Recommendation 3: Focus AVCD interventions on adding value and achieving sustainable impact.

Based on VC analyses conducted, interventions should consider which VC nodes and/or branches can be supported, and in what ways, to achieve greatest impact for the identified target groups. Interventions should add value to base production through technological advances in post-harvest processing, reduction of wastage, improved price advantage for purchase of inputs or sales, and more efficient consolidation and distribution channels, among others. It will also be imperative to track value addition activities based on a systems approach (e.g. in line with production and marketing cycles to allow for adaptability and responsiveness in implementation). Investment in such interventions should reduce costs, increase net profit and reduce risks to achieve greatest impact for identified target groups. Such strategies should also support resilience and versatility in target groups so that AVCD interventions enhance knowledge management and achieve sustained impact.

3Executive Summary

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Recommendation 4: Work with partners, especially the private sector, to strengthen strategic and operational approaches to AVCD.

The Bank should work closely with key partners to develop a coherent approach to AVCD. This will require identification of potential new partners and strengthening of approaches to partnership management in Bank AVCD interventions. Policy interventions will require strong strategic partnerships, often with other major development partners, to build regional influence for change. Often specialist advice will be required to carry out analyses and achieve the required changes in specific commodities. Operational partnerships will be particularly important in ensuring that the enabling factors are in place in areas of AVCD interventions. These may be regional or national partners with necessary experience and resources.

Recommendation 5: Take affirmative actions to ensure inclusiveness.

Inclusiveness is already well-covered in policy and design documents but more is required to ensure that inclusiveness results in impact for target populations. The Bank should develop a holistic approach to inclusiveness, which reflect an in-depth understanding of the power relations, bargaining framework and social position of vulnerable groups, and support their inclusion all along the VC. Quotas for inclusion are not enough. Participation in activities by default cannot be assumed to generate impact. The Bank should develop a holistic approach to inclusiveness looking not only at the position and roles of vulnerable populations all along the VC, but also at their capacity to access productive assets (water, capital, knowledge and land), their risk management strategies, level of literacy, capacity to be formally represented and the social norms they are confronted with in their communities and households. Affirmative action is required in AVCD interventions to ensure inclusiveness and wider environmental and social benefits. Analyzing the power relations and social constructions that exist between social groups and acting on such structural

aspects of marginalization is necessary to ensure a more inclusive distribution of created wealth and prevent unequal relations from perpetuating themselves. Distribution of the value added across the VC should be analyzed and compared to the position of vulnerable populations in the VC as a key input for developing inclusive strategies. Indeed, understanding how women and men participate in value chain activities, and the way VC benefits are distributed are critical for gender inclusiveness. Field guidelines and tools on how to address inclusiveness should be developed to support operational work.

Recommendation 6: Strengthen policy dialogue to enhance a conducive AVCD environment.

A policy component should be included in interventions to assist in enforcing change and support improvements in the AVCD environment. This implies not only developing a policy dialogue with national authorities, but also integrating other VC stakeholders around AVCD. It should go well beyond production and, through a holistic approach, develop improved sectoral policies encompassing land tenure, support services, knowledge systems, capacity building, strengthening of Farmers’ Organizations (FO), coordination of actors along the VC, the establishment of a framework to support producers in meeting quality standards, or support to establishing fair conditions for contract farming to develop. A holistic approach to the strengthening of an AVCD environment is all the more desirable that, though some aspects are specific to a given commodity (norms and standards, fiscal policy), others such as FO strengthening are likely to have knock on effects on the environment of other agricultural commodities. National level work and more localized interventions should be envisaged complementarily. Working at a local level most probably helps dealing with production, processing and local marketing issues whereas working at a national level creates better conditions for working on creating an enabling environment to AVCD in terms of policy issues as well as on institutional issues linked to global VC coordination and market regulation.


Management Response

Management welcomes the Independent Development Evaluation (IDEV) report, African Development Bank’s Support to Agricultural Value Chains Development: Lessons for the Feed Africa Strategy. As the Bank begins implementing the Feed Africa Strategy for Agricultural Transformation in Africa (2016–2025), this evaluation provides a timely assessment of the relevance, effectiveness and sustainability of the agricultural value chains development approaches used in Bank operations from 2005 to 2016. It also assesses performance related to the cross-cutting themes of capacity development, gender equality, youth empowerment, climate change and environmental sustainability. Overall, Management agrees with the findings and recommendations of the evaluation, particularly the importance of adopting a market-oriented approach to agricultural value chain development, conducting full value chain analysis to inform the design of operations and ensuring the inclusiveness and sustainability of interventions. Several issues raised by the evaluation either have been or are being addressed in the new operations under the Feed Africa Strategy. As a whole the evaluation provides useful lessons and opportunities for the Bank to improve its operations in the agriculture sector.

Management agrees with IDEV’s findings that the Feed Africa Strategy approved in 2016 represents a strategic shift by the Bank in the agriculture sector, from a predominantly food security approach to a targeted, focused and market-driven agricultural value chain development (AVCD) approach. Management also agrees that the Feed Africa Strategy is well aligned to key continental strategies, particularly the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme and the African Union’s Agenda 2063, and with the Bank’s High 5s.

The evaluation report highlights the importance of strong partnerships, which resonates well with the emphasis on collaboration and partnership in implementing the Feed Africa strategy. The Bank is engaging with a wide range of partners and stakeholders—bilateral and multilateral development agencies, research and philanthropic institutions and the private sector—to advance agricultural transformation on the continent. Management also notes that implementation of Feed Africa’s flagship initiatives will serve to significantly strengthen the Bank’s focus on AVCD—initiatives and operations

such as the Technologies for Africa Agricultural Transformation (TAAT), Post-Harvest Losses Reduction and Agro-Processing (PHAP), ENABLE Youth (Empowering Novel Agribusiness-Led Employment), Blue Economy, the Transformation of African Savannah Initiative, the Staple Crop Processing Zones (SCPZ), Support to Climate-Smart Agriculture, Support to Plantation Crops and Grey Matter Infrastructure programmes.

As IDEV observed, the size of the Bank’s annual agriculture portfolio has increased over the past 10 years, and it continues to increase. In 2017 project approvals in agriculture stood at UA 870 million, compared with an average of UA 320 million per year over 2005−2016. Management acknowledges that the increased inclusion of pillars relating to agricultural transformation, agro-industry promotion and food security in recently approved Country Strategy Papers provides opportune entry points to support AVCD in national programming in the agriculture sector. This trend will be reinforced throughout the implementation of the Feed Africa Strategy to achieve its targeted outcomes and outputs.

5Management Response

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Management acknowledges the gaps IDEV identified in the provision of AVCD financing, business and marketing support in operations implemented during the evaluation period. The orientation of the Bank’s operations in the agriculture sector was guided by the Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD) Sector Policy of 2000, which combined a wide range of areas of intervention: research and extension, crop and livestock production, rural finance and rural enterprise development, development of small-scale infrastructure (irrigation and rural roads), natural resources and environmental management. An important lesson learnt from the implementation of the ARD was the need for greater selectivity and consolidation of efforts to leverage the Bank’s comparative advantage to achieve notable development impact in regional member countries (RMCs).

In line with this finding, the Bank’s Medium Term Strategy (2008−2012) identified four priority areas: infrastructure, governance, the private sector, and higher education. The Agricultural Sector Strategy (2010−2014) and the Agriculture and Agribusiness Strategy (2015−2019), both of which emanated from the overarching Medium Term Strategy and later the Long-Term Strategy (2013−2022), sought to position the Bank to specifically support RMCs in the areas of agricultural infrastructure development and natural resource management and governance. Consequently, up to 80% of the project approvals in agriculture during this period had a strong agricultural infrastructure component.

In 2016, the Feed Africa Strategy recognised that successful agricultural transformation across the world and in Africa would be based on large-scale productivity increases; the full realisation of value addition, mainly agro-processing along the agricultural value chain; and a well-functioning private sector to efficiently allocate the skills and capital that drive long-term sustainable agribusiness growth. The strategy therefore put forward a new approach to agriculture as a business that is private-sector-driven and public-sector-enabled.

Methodology

Management appreciates the approach undertaken for this evaluation report. By adopting a theory-based focus, it did not evaluate specific investments or operations, but rather assessed existing operations in light of their application of key ACVD features or theory. This analysis provides an early assessment of the Bank’s effectiveness in implementing its Feed Africa strategy and paves the way for enhanced execution.

Building on the Feed Africa Strategy’s set of seven key enablers, the evaluation’s theory of change identified five elements — the fundamentals — that are vital to AVCD, and five key enablers — important areas of support needed in most interventions — that are already in place or supported by partners.

AVCD was adopted as a Bank strategy and special area of focus only with the approval of the Feed Africa Strategy in July 2016. However, the evaluation analysed past operations implemented before then, when AVCD was not at the core of the Bank’s strategic objectives. Therefore, the evaluation was rather premature; while pre-Feed Africa projects did allude to some aspects of AVCD, they did not fully mainstream the AVCD approach.

A further limitation of the evaluation was the method of selecting the country case studies. The selection criteria were largely incongruent with the scope of the evaluation. Many of the countries and projects selected did not adequately represent the priority value chains identified in the Feed Africa Strategy because they were designed and implemented well before the approval of the strategy. A better selection of case studies could have included such projects as the Gambia Agricultural Development Project, the Angola Cabinda Province Agricultural Value Chain Project, and the Cameroun Agricultural Value Chain Project. These projects were designed specifically using an AVCD approach and, though relatively new (approved in 2016 and 2017), would have provided a clearer evaluation of the Bank’s new orientation.


Because of the retrospective focus of the evaluation, the timeline of project and country case studies at its core did not always lend itself to a proper analysis of operations’ sustainability or to the provision of insights into current plans. The evaluation notes that “many of the current operations had commenced prior to the increasing focus on AVCD so the data for the evaluation was not always easy to identify as specifically related to AVCD or not”.

Finally, the evaluation did not sufficiently present evidence garnered from comparator institutions on the design and implementation of AVCD projects. Such an analysis would have strengthened recommendations and helped spur collaboration with sister institutions.

Project Design/Supervision

Management agrees with IDEV’s observation on the need for well-crafted monitoring and evaluation systems during project implementation, to better track and respond to gaps in value chain development and market changes. Better systems and data would benefit project midterm reviews by allowing an assessment of the immediate impact and suitability of project activities, followed by any necessary recalibration to changing contexts, ecosystems, actors and market conditions.

Management agrees with IDEV’s finding that the Bank primarily focused on infrastructure development with a value chain approach in projects during the period evaluated. As noted above, this was as a result of the infrastructure focus of the Bank’s institutional, sector and country policies. Among the seven enablers of the Feed Africa Strategy, increased investment in hard and soft infrastructure is still ranked as the third most important factor considered in lending support to AVCD, as well as strengthening forward and backward linkages to markets to enhance supply chain efficiencies.

Nevertheless, emphasis on increasing production and productivity in the agriculture sector will be the central enabler in Bank interventions. For this reason, the Bank launched TAAT to give impetus to increased productivity of selected target commodities. Noting that low agricultural productivity exacts a high human and economic cost on the continent, the Bank committed to overcome this issue and increase farmers’ returns on investment — a point overlooked in the evaluation report. Indeed, Africa’s staple crop yields remain the lowest of any region in the world. The productivity of Africa’s five staple crops—rice, wheat, maize, potato, and cassava—is only 56% of the international average.

The integrated value chain approach under Feed Africa also focuses on bringing about improvements in processing, distribution and retail to capture the full economic potential of improved and increased production. The persistent productivity challenge is also addressed in the Feed Africa Strategy under the PHAP programme. SCPZ—a concept now being piloted in Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo and Togo—is another initiative to drive this important element of the value chain.

These projects will combine investment from a consortium of development finance institutions led by the Bank with government and private sector resources to fund infrastructure development (energy, water and transport infrastructure, as well as input supply and storage facilities), modern processing and associated services in selected zones of high agricultural potential. This approach will create efficient production activities and enhance competitive farm-factory linkages. Improved policy measures and incentives under the SCPZ will alleviate logistical constraints (particularly post-harvest losses) and strengthen value chain linkages, attracting private sector investors. The ultimate goal of the SCPZ is to turn large uncultivated rural areas across Africa into agro-processing hubs and zones of economic prosperity. This is a critical step required to spur industrialisation and structural transformation on the continent and lift millions of Africans out of poverty.


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Delivering on Five Fundamentals

The evaluation report found that the Bank delivered relatively well on three of the fundamental elements at the core of effective AVCD: the Bank’s analytical work, responsiveness to market changes, and profitability and value addition. However, it found that the Bank did less well on addressing inclusiveness and sustainability.

Value chain analysis

Management concurs with IDEV on the importance of conducting comprehensive value chain analyses to inform the Bank’s design of well-targeted agricultural projects and interventions. During the evaluation period, the Bank based project designs on value chain studies carried out by the national governments, including in Zambia, Uganda, Nigeria, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This allowed for timely project preparation and use of country systems, and it supported domestic ownership of the projects. However, Management acknowledges that in some circumstances national value chain studies may not be sufficiently robust to adequately cover all the salient features required in the analyses. For example, in the Zambia cashew nut value chain project, the National Cashew Development Strategy (2012−2016) formulated by the Government of Zambia was not exhaustive enough to be considered a full value chain analysis.

Going forward, and in line with Feed Africa’s strategic focus on AVCD development, the Bank will carry out in-depth competitiveness and value chain analysis studies in priority agriculture commodities and corridors identified for each agro-ecological zone—as it is doing in Ghana and Zimbabwe. These studies will include stakeholder mapping exercises and will cover regional value chain development; level and distribution of value-added products; economic corridors; market demand for the given commodity at the national, regional and international levels; environmental considerations; and risk assessment and mitigation measures.

Profitability and value addition

Management agrees with the evaluation finding that the Bank’s interventions placed insufficient emphasis on value addition, agro-processing, commercial viability and profitability. This is primarily due to the distinction between the sovereign and non-sovereign projects financed by the Bank. The nine case studies evaluated were all public sector projects financed from the Bank’s sovereign investment window. They aimed to provide public goods, including infrastructure development, research and extension services. Financial and economic analysis based on a cost-benefit methodology was used to determine the viability of these projects. Under standard capital budgeting theory, the main criteria used were a positive net present value and an internal rate of return higher than the cost of capital.

Commercial viability and profitability were more the focus of non-sovereign agriculture operations designed and managed by the Bank’s erstwhile private sector department. Under the new Business Development and Delivery Model, both sovereign and non-sovereign operations have been combined under the same Bank departments—a change that is likely to encourage the design and development of public-private partnership projects in agriculture. Additionally, the Bank’s AVCD approach—which will largely be private-sector-driven, with support from the public sector in providing an enabling environment—will necessitate greater emphasis on commercial viability and profitability.

Responsiveness to market

IDEV’s scoping of the value chain approach also stressed the need to adopt a more market-oriented approach in AVCD. Management welcomes this approach. While narrowing the infrastructure gap in the agriculture sector remains highly important, market-oriented support through AVCD provides a significant lever for wide-reaching improvement in livelihood generation, broad-based economic development and standards of living in the RMCs.


In line with this approach, implementation of the Feed Africa Strategy will primarily be public-sector-enabled and private-sector-led.

Management will therefore support the assessment of market access in Bank operations, especially along regional value chain and commodity corridors, to guarantee greater market penetration and business profitability.

Addressing inclusiveness

Management agrees with the evaluation finding that 63% of the agriculture portfolio interventions reviewed promoted inclusiveness through support for gender equality and youth empowerment. The Bank will continue to emphasise supporting women farmers — who make up 57% of African smallholders — through building capacity, facilitating access to land, equipment and finance, and improving market linkages. Strong gender mainstreaming measures were included in all agriculture projects during the period covered by the evaluation report.

Management acknowledges that while youth empowerment activities were to some extent featured in operations during the evaluation period, the more recent Feed Africa Strategy, in conjunction with the Strategy for Jobs for Youth in Africa 2016−2020, places clearer emphasis on the opportunities that can arise through AVCD for young people. The ENABLE Youth Flagship Programme, which is being implemented across African countries, serves as an entry point to support young African farmers by providing (i) capacity building through business incubation; (ii) accessible and affordable finance through a combination of grants, loans, and equity capital; and (iii) support for a more conducive business environment. Going forward, youth will be systemically mainstreamed in various AVCD projects to ensure the creation of the next generation of African farmers.

Management notes IDEV’s findings on the need to strengthen analytical work on target populations and

value chains, with a focus on the role of the poor and other vulnerable groups. The Bank conducts gender analyses to inform the design of gender−sensitive interventions. Gender-aggregated data are also used to set project targets and monitor impact. Bank interventions embed inclusiveness in their design features—for example, by establishing daycare centres, functional sanitary facilities and work-ways to cater for the disabled. Moving forward, these measures will be scaled up, budgeted and consistently tracked.

The Bank’s Gender Strategy 2014–2018 enhanced the focus on improving gender equality and women’s empowerment through Bank operations. Already, the Investing in Gender Equality for Africa’s Transformation initiative and Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa support this focus, including by adopting the AVCD approach in the design and implementation of projects. The Bank will undertake gender-focused operations as they arise. The Bank’s Gender Marker System will also be used consistently across projects.

Sustainability

Management concurs with the evaluation’s observation that the time-frame under study was insufficient to adequately assess the sustainability of most project interventions. The project case studies identified by the report have presented varying degrees of sustainability for such reasons as regional and country specificities, socioeconomic contexts, project design and market dynamics.

Management disagrees with IDEV’s findings that infrastructure facilities in the evaluated projects had limited sustainability because they were not well planned and did not have the support of local community stakeholders. The infrastructure constructed under the projects in Rwanda and DRC was based on preliminary studies that were extensively discussed with Government counterparts, beneficiaries and other national actors. This approach is line with the Bank’s standard work


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procedure at preparation stage, which involves systematically consulting project stakeholders, including government counterparts, development partners, beneficiary communities, the private sector and civil society.

Management agrees that more extensive dialogue between private actors and producers at an early stage and during implementation would help get stronger and more lasting results. IDEV omitted to cover the role of the political economy in project sustainability. In many RMCs there is a serious risk of poor policy continuity and significant changes in strategic orientation occasioned by changes in government. Mitigation measures adopted by the Bank to address this challenge in the agriculture sector portfolio include sustained country dialogue with the government, with support from the Bank’s country offices. Flexibility during the midterm review, to redesign projects to include relevant project activities proposed by the government, has also been indispensable.

Going forward, the Bank will organise extensive stakeholder consultation workshops with a strong private sector presence, which will include large-scale commercial farmers as well as medium-scale and smallholder farmers. This approach will support clearer identification and understanding of value chain linkages and market actors: producers, processors and wholesalers as well as retailers. Furthermore, each priority commodity value chain analysis to be conducted for selected countries will include stakeholder mapping at each node and branch of the value chains, as well as an assessment of the resources and output flows between them.

Management disagrees with IDEV’s observation that the green growth approach has yet to be standardised in the Bank’s interventions in the agriculture sector. In line with the Bank’s Integrated Safeguards System (ISS), the preparation of all the case study projects included environment and social impact assessments that informed the design of the environment and social management plan (ESMP) developed to reflect the project’s category.

In addition, an associated budget was allocated to finance the ESMP. The ratings of both the ISS and ESMP were, according to standard practice, validated by the relevant Bank departments.

As IDEV noted in the evaluation, the Bank will provide support to climate-smart agriculture under its Feed Africa strategy. This will primarily focus on promoting sustainable agriculture for food security, taking into account the effects of climate change by sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and income, and reducing greenhouse emissions. It will also address environmental concerns and the protection of natural resources, including in fragile situations. It is important to mention that the Bank will deepen its collaboration with such organisations as the Global Environment Facility, Climate Investment Funds, the World Wide Fund for Nature, and the major new entrant in climate financing—the Green Climate Fund—to ensure that environmental integrity is maintained.

In addition, the dissemination and use of productivity-enhancing technologies is expected to reduce environmental degradation and post-harvest losses along the value chain.

Delivering Five Key Enablers

Management appreciates IDEV’s work in designing a theory of change focused on how the Bank supports AVCD to achieve its Feed Africa goals and in assessing the extent to which its key enablers are already in place or supported by partners. Management’s response to IDEV’s assessment of the five Feed Africa key enablers follows.

Availability of appropriate infrastructure and technology

The evaluation confirmed that the Bank made significant investments and positive contributions to AVCD through the provision of a wide variety of infrastructure that relates to production, processing


and marketing, and market access: feeder roads (DRC), markets and processing facilities (Zambia and DRC), and irrigation infrastructure (Kenya, Morocco and Mozambique).

Management agrees that the Bank could have been more effective in projects constructing large processing facilities compared to strengthening existing, smaller ones. For example, in DRC meat processing facilities were underutilised, and in Uganda there were plans to construct facilities without due consideration of market size and natural resource capability.

Management agrees with the need to invest in innovations, research and technology to improve AVCD on the continent. The support provided under the multinational Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, which supports agricultural research, will be strengthened and expanded under the recently approved TAAT, which promotes the dissemination and adoption of existing (ready-to-go) improved agricultural technologies across each value chain. The Bank will also provide significant support to reinforce regional and national agricultural research systems and extension services.

Management notes the observation that more attention could have been given to the use of information and communication technology (ICT) to improve market information services. As the evaluation mentioned, ICT-based interventions—distance training, market information, e-wallet system, smartcard, climate and harvest forecast—that improve information symmetries will be integrated into new projects. Already the Bank is supporting the digital registration of farmers and agro-dealers in Uganda, Nigeria, Liberia and Togo. This activity has a strong potential to catalyse private sector agribusiness growth by digitally empowering a traditionally excluded portion of the population, making them more attractive to financial institutions. The Bank is also working on innovative weather-based index insurance products in close collaboration with expert institutions such as Africa Risk Capacity.

Conducive policy and regulatory environment

Management concurs with IDEV’s finding that the Bank’s support for the development of a conducive regulatory environment has been limited. This has in part been because improving the business environment requires widespread reforms that entail extensive policy dialogue with governments. As the evaluation highlighted, however, the Bank’s interventions improved the business environment in Morocco and Rwanda. To improve countries’ business climate, the Bank has launched the Leadership for Agriculture Platform (L4Ag) to promote dialogue, advocacy and conducive policy formulation among stakeholders in the agriculture sector. The Bank has also initiated a collaboration with the World Bank on the Enabling Business for Agriculture Index as an entry point into policy dialogue with national government counterparts to build more conducive and efficient business environments that will attract increased domestic, regional and foreign investment to agriculture.

Availability of appropriate business support

Management agrees with the evaluation on the need to provide capacity-building support in agriculture to strengthen technical and business-related skills such as process monitoring and management, financial analysis and management, and human resource management. During the evaluation period, this type of technical assistance was mainly provided to Bank agriculture sector operations through the Fund for African Private Sector Assistance. Going forward and in line with IDEV’s recommendations, the Bank will expand the provision of technical assistance for business support to RMCs.

Internally, the Bank has already begun a series of organisation-wide training and capacity-building programmes on the AVCD approach, the design of agriculture sector non-sovereign operations and public-private sector blended finance interventions.


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Access to finance

Management agrees with IDEV on the importance of strengthening access to finance across AVCs. Going forward, the Bank will work to expand access to finance, particularly for rural and other underserved populations. In addition, innovative instruments are being designed to crowd-in and leverage new sources of financing to agriculture, especially from the private sector. In this area, the Bank has already begun engaging with a wide range of partners, including commercial banks, impact investors, private equity firms and philanthropic institutions.

The Bank is also scaling up investment in non-sovereign operations by using its capital resources to catalyse private investors in the agricultural space by expanding the entire value chain development, both upstream and downstream. In particular, the African Investment Forum will showcase bankable projects, attract financing, and provide platforms for investing across multiple countries. It will also serve as a unique forum for international business and social impact investors looking to transact and deploy funds to bankable projects in Africa and will assist in connecting investors with both public and private sector projects throughout the continent.

In addition, the Bank is promoting as a key Feed Africa flagship the design of risk-sharing facilities and blended finance instruments in a number of countries. Learning from the successful experience in Nigeria, the design of the Ghana Incentive Based Risk Sharing Project is at an advanced stage. The Facility for Agriculture Finance in Africa will also serve as multi-investor facility to provide financing to the missing middle in the agribusiness sector.

Private sector participation and linkages among VC actors

Under Feed Africa, the Bank will adopt a more business-oriented and market-based approach. This supports the Bank’s paradigm shift from “agriculture as a way of life” to “agriculture as a business”. Inherent to this approach is that agricultural transformation must be private-sector-led and public-sector-enabled. For this reason, the Bank’s Development Business and Delivery Model provides for non-sovereign operations to be originated and implemented directly within the Agriculture and Agro-Industries Department (AHAI) and the Agriculture Finance and Rural Development (AHFR), and no longer from a separate private sector department.


SUMMARY OF MANAGEMENT ACTION

Recommendation Management Response


An explicit AVCD approach, a common terminology, and a consistent set of fundamentals should be adopted within the Bank, and discussed/disseminated within the RMCs so as harmonize dialogues on VC approaches. Guidelines and an organization-wide capacity development program could be developed in line with the AVCD approach.

Agreed. The AVCD approach is the cornerstone of the Feed Africa Strategy. Implementation of the Bank’s Feed Africa flagship initiatives—particularly the TAAT, PHAP, Enable Youth, L4G, and Climate Smart Agriculture programmes—will build a coherent and consistent approach to AVCD across Bank operations. These flagship initiatives will translate in a practical manner the main enablers of the Strategy’s AVCD orientation. Already, the Bank has held a series of workshops that convened key stakeholders—national governments, research institutions, development partners, farmers associations, the private sector and youth—to exchange views and identify opportunities to deploy AVCD to promote sustainable agricultural transformation. The workshops on Post-Harvest Losses, Youth in Agriculture, Policy Leadership in Agriculture and the Design of Risk-sharing Facilities have contributed notably in mapping existing efforts and identifying opportunities for improvement. They will serve as an important guide in providing technical assistance and capacity building to RMCs as part of the Bank’s investment operations.

Further actions

❙ Management will strengthen and harmonise consultative workshops as well as upstream policy dialogue as part of project and flagship preparation and implementation. Stakeholder consultative meetings on the implementation progress achieved on each flagship will be held biennially, starting from Q1 2020.

❙ Management will develop a common methodology to ensure successful mainstreaming of the AVCD approach by Q1 2019. This methodology will include guidelines on the fundamentals and a checklist on the enablers to support the monitoring of operations.

❙ The Bank will intensify its efforts to ensure that teams with multidimensional expertise reflecting the seven main AVCD enablers (especially sustainability and inclusiveness) are fully involved in all stages of agriculture project preparation to systematically mainstream these critical issues. This will be done by end-Q2 2018, once the AHAI/AHFR teams are fully staffed.

❙ Within the Bank, by end-2019 organisation-wide capacity-development programmes will be developed and rolled out to disseminate the Feed Africa approach to AVCD and promote synergies in operations designed and implemented by other Bank departments.

❙ AHAI/AHFR will hold twice-yearly retreats and technical sessions to review its work in relation to AVCD.

Recommendation 2: Build AVCD analytical and implementation capabilities

Successful interventions in AVCD require that country program and project designs are based on AVC analyses as part of their preparatory activities. This initial analysis should involve identification of the support required for the enabling environment and where interventions are required (by the Bank as well as partners). It will be important to include adequate resourcing in program and project budgets early in implementation to carry out the necessary analysis. At a minimum, this should include farming systems management requirements, technical production requirements for innovation and value addition, market assessment, and participatory stakeholder analysis.

Agreed. More thorough AVC studies and analyses will be conducted during the design of the Bank’s agriculture sector projects under Feed Africa. These studies will include AVC stakeholder mapping exercises, productivity and value addition assessment at each stage of the value chain, and market and gaps assessment. Management will organise regular in-house capacity-building programmes for staff and will develop economic and sector work on AVCD.

Further actions

❙ The Bank will undertake comprehensive AVC analysis and commodity-specific studies. The Ghana and Zimbabwe studies to be delivered by Q3 2018 will serve as the foundation for the design of the pilot Transformation of the African Savannah Initiative (TASI) in Ghana and the Zimbabwe Agricultural Value Chain Project. When RMCs have already carried out AVC studies, the Bank will assess the comprehensiveness of these studies and allocate project preparatory resources (e.g., from the Middle Income Country Technical Assistance Fund or Project Preparation Funds) to complete them.


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It is also important to incorporate processes and resources to allow for review of VC analyses during implementation to identify market dynamics and respond to changing contexts. The analyses need to be well understood and used by project implementers, who would require orientation and capacity development of key value chain actors.

❙ Starting in Q1 2018, Management will strengthen the monitoring and evaluation frameworks and reporting systems for any new AVCD-focused operations. Provisions will be made within the design of project components and the project budget to enable market-induced modifications during implementation to effectively seize opportunities that may arise. This will ensure flexibility and responsiveness to changing market contexts in the Bank’s AVCD projects.

Recommendation 3: Focus AVCD interventions on adding value and achieving sustainable impact

Interventions should add value to base production through technological advances in post-harvest processing, reduction of wastage, improved price advantage for purchase of inputs or sales, and more efficient consolidation and distribution channels, among others. It will also be imperative to track value addition activities based on a systems approach (e.g. in line with production and marketing cycles to allow for adaptability and responsiveness in implementation). Investment in such interventions should reduce costs, increase net profit and reduce risks to achieve greatest impact for identified target groups. Such strategies should also support resilience and versatility in target groups so that AVCD interventions enhance knowledge management and achieve sustained impact.

Partially agreed. In line with Feed Africa, the Bank’s AVCD operations will focus on moving priority commodities to the top of the value chains. Already, through the TAAT Programme and the Special Crop Processing Zones, Bank development investment interventions will concentrate proven technologies, inputs (such as improved seeds and fertilisers), storage facilities and market linkages in high-potential agricultural areas to alleviate logistical constraints to production and strengthen value chain linkages.

Further actions

Through its strategy and flagships, the Bank plans on boosting investments in, among other things, farm mechanisation, access to climate-smart agriculture know-how and technologies, and essential infrastructure. The Bank will increase analytical work on and client awareness of the relevance and importance of AVCD (see response to recommendation 2), strengthen collaboration and focus on upstream policy dialogue and institutional frameworks (see response to recommendation 1), and increase the its own AVCD expertise to enable engagement opportunities that are conducive to building a pipeline of AVCD projects (see response to recommendation 1). Particularly in countries with high potential to grow AVCs, the Bank will ❙ Strengthen project monitoring frameworks and mechanisms at the design stage by clearly highlighting the project’s expected contribution and logic of intervention.

❙ Increase analytical work on and client awareness of the relevance and importance of better tracking ACVD at country and regional levels.

Recommendation 4: Work with partners, especially the private sector, to strengthen strategic and operational approaches to AVCD

Work closely with key partners to develop a coherent approach to AVCD. This will require identification of potential new partners and strengthening of approaches to partnership management in Bank AVCD interventions. Policy interventions will require strong strategic partnerships, often with other major development partners to build regional influence for change. Often specialist advice will be required to carry out analyses and achieve the required changes in specific commodities. Operational partnerships will be particularly important in ensuring that the enabling factors are in place in areas of AVCD interventions. These may be regional or national partners with necessary experience and resources

Agreed. Leveraging key partnerships is essential in catalysing investments to expand AVCD in Africa. The Bank will place greater emphasis on public-private partnerships in its AVCD operations.The Agriculture Finance and Rural Development Department (AHFR) will specifically execute non-sovereign operations for the transformation of value chains. AHFR is focusing on identifying companies that have a transformational impact in select Feed Africa areas. Key initiatives include mobilising investment in support of the Multi-Actor Cocoa Investment Framework, expanding risk-sharing facilities and mainstreaming the Africa disaster risk financing.The value chain approach has been incorporated in the development of several AVC projects to support the Feed Africa Strategy: (i) the Rice Development Value Chain Project in Guinea Bissau, (ii) the Potato Value Chain Project in Nigeria, (iii) the project to improve irrigation schemes through value chain development in Tunisia, and (iv) the Uganda value chain development project. These projects are centred on building the capacity of individual farmers and other value chain actors to sustainably improve their productivity and profitability.




Further actions

❙ The Bank will continue to develop public sector operations that have an embedded cooperation with private sector. This will be done through ensuring that private sector stakeholders are consulted during project preparation.

❙ The Bank will strengthen its partnership activities by reviewing MoUs with key partner organisations, as they expire, to identify opportunities for partnership in knowledge work and joint missions and project implementation. This activity has commenced with the recent engagement with UNIDO for the revision of the MoU between the two organisations, and the revised MoU now reflects the emphases of the Bank’s Feed Africa and Industrialisation strategies.

❙ The Bank will aggressively pursue smart partnerships and co-financing opportunities by leveraging its existing relationships with other MDBs, RDBs and the private sector to launch both investment opportunities and knowledge generation and dissemination. Clear and systematic linkages between AVCD and domestic financial sector intermediaries in RMCs will be strengthened to promote the expansion and sustainability of AVCs.

Recommendation 5: Take affirmative actions to ensure inclusiveness

Develop a holistic approach to inclusiveness looking not only at the position and roles of vulnerable populations all along the VC but also at their capacity to access productive assets (water, capital, knowledge, land), their risk management strategies, level of literacy, capacity to be formally represented and the social norms they are confronted with in their communities and households. Affirmative action is required in AVCD interventions to ensure inclusiveness and wider environmental and social benefits. Analysing the power relations and social constructions that exist between social groups and acting on such structural aspects of marginalization is necessary to ensure a more inclusive distribution of created wealth and prevent unequal relations from perpetuating themselves. Distribution of the value-added across the VC should be analysed and compared to the position of vulnerable populations in the VC as a key input for developing inclusive strategies. Indeed, understanding how women and men participate in value chain activities and the way VC benefits are distributed are critical for gender inclusiveness. Field guidelines and tools on how to address inclusiveness should be developed to support operational work.

Partially agreed. Inclusiveness and sustainability are at the core of the Feed Africa Strategy. Management will therefore ensure increased participation by under-represented actors in AVCD (particularly women, youth, rural populations and farmer associations). Special emphasis will be placed on increased access to nutritional food to strengthen the continent’s grey matter infrastructure, which has far-reaching benefits for longevity, productivity and efficiency. The use of environmentally sustainable practices through proven research techniques and climate-smart agriculture will also be scaled up. Management notes the areas of comparative advantage (including resource availability, expertise and skills mix) of the two Agriculture Departments. We also recognise that some activities, such as literacy programmes and social engagement, are better implemented by sister departments within the Bank. AHAI/AHFR commits to working closely with these departments to ensure that all the facets of affirmative action are sufficiently taken into account. To this end, joint cross-departmental project preparation missions will be conducted.Further actions ❙ The Bank will systematically ensure the deeper engagement of farmer associations, civil society organisations and youth representatives during project design. In collaboration with the AHHD and AHGC Departments, the Bank is developing comprehensive databases of these actors to facilitate their involvement.

❙ Beginning in Q1 2018, the Bank will track project impacts on disadvantaged groups such as women and youth when projects specifically target such groups.

❙ By 2020 field guidelines and tools on how to address inclusiveness will be included in the Bank’s common AVCD methodology and checklist.

❙ From Q3 2018, the sustainability of the Bank’s AVCD operations will be strengthened by promoting climate-smart agriculture techniques among farmers and agribusinesses through investment programmes. Additionally, emphasis will be placed on training stakeholders in RMCs on Climate Smart Agriculture techniques and coordinating the interventions of major development finance institutions to meet the continent’s CSA targets.


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Recommendation 6: Strengthen policy dialogue to enhance a conducive AVCD environment

A policy component should be included in interventions to assist in enforcing change and support improvements in the AVCD environment. This implies not only developing a policy dialogue with national authorities, but also integrating other VC stakeholders around AVCD. It should go well beyond production and, through a holistic approach, develop improved sectoral policies encompassing land tenure, support services, knowledge systems, capacity building, strengthening of Farmers’ Organizations (FO), coordination of actors along the VC, establishment of a framework to support producers in meeting quality standards, or support to establishing fair conditions for contract farming to develop.

Agreed. Going forward the Bank will continue to strengthen policy dialogue among the main stakeholders—national governments, national agricultural research and extension systems, private sector actors (particularly seed companies, fertiliser companies, agro-dealers and processors/millers) and farmer associations—in the priority value chains. The Agriculture Department will consult and work with the Bank’s Economic Complex (ECVP) to this end. Further actions ❙ Broad stakeholder engagement and consultation will continue to be a central component of project preparation and appraisal. The engagement of private sector players will be significantly scaled up to effectively address market-oriented challenges. The AHAI annual reports will track the implementation of this metric.

❙ Beginning in Q2 2018, National Agricultural Research and Extension System (NARES) and Agriculture Training Centres (ATCs ) will also be used as a point of contact and one-stop shop for strengthening farmers’ organisations, coordinating actors along the VC, establishing a framework to support producers in meeting quality standards, or supporting the establishment of fair conditions for contract farming to develop.

❙ The Bank is recruiting a Chief Agricultural Policy expert to provide additional expertise on policy issues within the AHAI/AHFR Department. This expert is expected to come on board by Q2 2018.

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17Introduction

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This summary report presents the findings and recommendations of the formative evaluation of the Bank’s support to the agricultural value chains development (AVCD). Section 1 presents the objective, scope, approach, and limitations of the evaluation. Section 2 presents the background and definitions. Section 3 provides an overview of what the Bank has done in agriculture. Section 4 elaborates the theory of change for AVCD. Section 5 presents the key findings with respect to whether the Bank has applied good practice in AVCD. Finally, section 6 presents the conclusions of the evaluation and proposes recommendations.

Evaluation Scope, Objective and Questions

The Independent Development Evaluation (IDEV) of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB or the Bank) has conducted an evaluation of Bank’s support for agricultural value chains development (AVCD). The objectives of the evaluation are to: (i) assess the relevance, inclusiveness, effectiveness, and sustainability of the Bank’s support to agricultural value chains development; and (ii) provide lessons and recommendations for supporting the implementation of Feed Africa, one of the Bank’s High 5s.3

This evaluation addresses three key questions: (a) To what extent have Bank strategies and interventions been relevant in their focus on value chains development? (b) To what extent have value chains development interventions been effective in delivering sustainable development results? (c) To what extent have value chains development interventions been inclusive (of the poor, women and youth) and supportive of green growth? In answering these key questions, the evaluation analyzes the factors influencing the Bank’s performance to

propose lessons and recommendations for ongoing and new interventions. The evaluation covers the period 2005–2016 with a main focus on the Bank’s interventions in the agriculture sector.

Evaluation Approach and Methods

The evaluation was designed as formative to generate lessons that can be applied to improve implementation of ongoing and the design of new interventions in value chain development. The evaluation used a theory-based4 approach which allows testing and exploring pathways by which results are achieved, assessing the Bank's support for AVCD in relation to value chain theory, built on the current knowledge and evidence. Nonetheless, it was also important for the evaluation to go beyond the theory of value chains development towards pragmatic identification of successes of and constraints to value chains development. The evaluation approach, therefore, also drew from realist evaluation, which acknowledges that the same theories do not necessarily generate the same results in different locations, in unique contexts, with varied stakeholders and in different timeframes.5 The third section, provides the details of the theory of change for agricultural value chains development.

Findings of this evaluation were generated by triangulating information from multiple lines of evidence from a series of background works:

❙ The literature review presented the features and status of agricultural value chains in Africa and globally, the successes, potential benefits, risks and constraints of AVCD;

❙ The portfolio review6 described the evolution of Bank support to the agriculture sector and design features related to AVCD;

Introduction


❙ The policy and strategy review comprised a review of the Bank’s policies and strategies during 2005–2016 relating to agriculture as well as a sample of country strategy papers (CSPs). The review also analyzed key Africa-wide agriculture and development strategies, and strategies of other multilateral development partners in supporting AVCD;

❙ The country case studies (Figure 1) provided opportunity to investigate how different forms of investments and designs by the Bank and partners can contribute towards positive outcomes in AVCD;

❙ Key informant interviews were conducted with the Bank representatives currently working at the strategic level in the agriculture, rural development and private sector departments. Each case study included focus group

discussions and interviews, both in the capital and in the project area, with: (i) producers; (ii) processors; (iii) traders (retailers, wholesalers, import or export companies); (iv) Government authorities concerned with the commodity (at national and local levels); (v) Bank’s Country Team and project team; and (vi) Development Partners.

All the above reports are available as background documents. The details of the methodology and evaluation matrix are presented in Annexes 1 and 2 respectively.

Limitations and Challenges of the Evaluation

The main limitations and challenges experienced during the evaluation and the mitigation measures taken are given in Table 1.

MoroccoWheat

DR CongoMeat

ZambiaCashew

MozambiqueRice

RwandaDairy

KenyaTomato

UgandaFish

LiberiaCassava

Côte d’IvoireCocoa

Figure 1: Overview of the 9 selected case study countries and commodity value chains

19Introduction

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Table 1: Limitations of the evaluation and their means of mitigation

Limitation Means of mitigationAs a theory-based evaluation, the analysis relies on available literature in AVCD. While there is a growing body of knowledge on VCD, there is limited literature that focuses on AVCD in Africa.

Literature that was applicable to Africa, e.g. including Africa studies, was given attention in the literature review. As a formative evaluation, there is opportunity to build on this evaluation’s findings as more evidence becomes available.

Many of the current operations had commenced prior to the increasing focus on AVCD so the data for the evaluation was not always easy to identify as specifically related to AVCD or not.

Project design documents were reviewed to identify component descriptions. If unclear, other sections in the design report were reviewed and evaluator judgement applied.

The quality of the Bank data on the Systems, Applications and Products (SAP) platform was variable as project data were not always updated, and sometimes relevant entries were not made correctly (e.g. subsector category).

Where entries were unclear, project design documents were reviewed and evaluator judgement applied.

For the case studies, comprehensiveness and scope were limited by the constraints on resources and hence relatively short timeframe available for in-country consultations and visits. Use of a realist approach means that lessons can be drawn from each case study but cannot necessarily be expected to directly apply to other contexts (i.e. other commodities or countries in Africa), without due consideration to each specific context.

In evaluation analysis, reference is made to the specific case studies in relation to the findings generated. Evaluation findings are not presented as empirical but as lessons learned to be applied as appropriate in different contexts.

During the preparation of country case studies, it was found that many data were not available, or were outdated or incomplete and it was not always possible to gather data to directly respond to all evaluation sub-questions in each of the case studies.

These limitations are identified in each specific case study report and findings are clearly presented in the context of available information.

The available resources and time for the evaluation limited the case studies to one commodity per country, which means that evidence from other commodities where the Bank is supporting AVCD may not have been captured.

Case study findings are presented as highlighting key learnings for one commodity, rather than as a comprehensive analysis of AVCD within each country.

The evaluation covers Bank’s interventions in agriculture sector only and not in other sectors such as energy, transport, governance, etc.

The evaluation clearly indicated that the lessons are generated based on Bank’s operations in the agriculture sector.

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21Background and Definitions

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Agricultural Development in Africa

Agriculture is considered the mainstay of the economy of most African countries, contributing to a major share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), rural employment and income, and export earnings in the continent.7 While GDP overall has been increasing in Africa, the growth of the agriculture sector has slowed in recent years, signaling low productivity growth and limited value addition activities in the sector. In addition, despite the importance of agriculture for the continent’s economy, Africa still remains a net importer of food.8

To date, agricultural development in Africa has generally aimed to increase food security and decrease poverty, usually through a focus on increasing production and productivity. Some of the key impediments to agricultural development relate to unpredictable rainfall and poor soil conditions, low adoption of improved inputs and technology due to policy and

market conditions, poor market infrastructure, and low availability of investment for agricultural development. Reflecting these identified constraints to development, interventions in agricultural development are increasingly broadening their focus on farm to market to consumer approaches, particularly through agricultural value chain development (AVCD).9

With the food price crisis in 2008, a new attention among development partners has been generated on agricultural value chain development with the potential of ‘pro-poor’ value chains. A good analysis of the emergence of the value chain approach in agriculture is provided in the World Bank publication, Building Competitiveness in Africa's Agriculture (2010). The publication concludes that globalization in industry has opened opportunity for agricultural exports as well as domestic agricultural markets. Nonetheless, the global trends demonstrate the extent to which Africa still lags behind other regions in terms of food production (Figure 2).

Background and Definitions

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

220

1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008

Africa South America Asia

Figure 2: Food production per capita in Africa, Asia and South America

Gros

s Pr

oduc

tion

Per C

ap In

dex

1961

/63=

100,

3

year

mov

ing

av.

Source: Wiggins, S. (2013) ‘African Agriculture in a Changing Global Context’, Overseas Development Institute compiled from FAOSTAT data.

(1961–63 to 2008–10, indexed to 1961-63, three-year moving average)


Agricultural Value Chain: Definitions

Box 1 gives working definitions used in the evaluation for value chains and related concepts drawing and adapted from relevant literature.10

AVCD has emerged as a prominent approach to economic development, through interventions that may target whole value chains, or specific segments or stakeholders.11 AVCD initiatives

can take many forms, with some targeting whole value chains, or others targeting one node (a link between forward and backward linkage) only, or a branch made up of several nodes of the value chain and associated links to other industries and services12 (Figure 3). More generally, AVCD typically aims to better integrate commodity production stages with markets and other actors including input providers, processors and transporters.13

❙ Agricultural value chain (AVC) describes a specific, coordinated and collaborative chain comprising the network of actors required to produce and process a particular farm commodity or product, in which value is added along various segments as the product is moved and/or modified and marketed in response to consumer demands.

❙ AVC Development (AVCD) in the African Development Bank and Feed Africa context, AVCD comprises identification, comprehensive analysis, targeted support and mitigation of risk for a specific value chain/s that have capacity to generate benefit for the whole network of actors engaged in input supply, production, storing, transporting, processing, marketing and consumption; with a particular focus on inclusive approaches that will generate additional benefit to smallholder farmers, women and young people.

❙ Global Value Chains (GVC) describes the full range of activities undertaken to bring a product or service from its conception to its end use and how these activities are distributed over geographic space and across international borders. This can comprise a business sourcing inputs from another country for its own processing or even its export production for another country. Major GVCs are affected by many complex factors, particularly cross border regulation, bio-security standards and tight schedules.

Box 1: Definition of terms

23Background and Definitions

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Figure 3: Three approaches to agricultural value chain development

Source: IDEV (2016): Evaluation of Bank’s support to the agricultural value chains development: Literature Review Report.

Nodal intervention

Branch intervention

Full chain intervention

Input

Input

Input

Production

Production

Production

Storage, processing, packaging



Transport & wholesaling



Marketing & retailing



Associated industries and services

(Elements of the value chain supported in each approach are coloured in orange)


The Bank’s Strategic Approach to Agriculture

The Ten-Year Strategy (2013-2022). In this strategy, the Bank places itself to assume a more central role for Africa’s development. It puts forward the Bank as a catalyst for transformational change. With respect to agriculture, this strategy places a more direct focus on achieving food security either through increased production, access or disposable income for purchase of food. There is specific mention of the need to address trade barriers and also price volatility of food. This strategy presented the concept of value chains as from “farm to mouth” but did not clearly outline the approach that the Bank would take in supporting value chains. Except for the Feed Africa Strategy, it is notable that other Bank strategy documents that were released following the Ten-Year Strategy make little or no mention of the potential of agricultural value chains. These include Investing in Gender Equality for Africa's Transformation — Gender Strategy 2014–2017 (2014); and New Deal on Energy for Africa (2016).

Feed Africa Strategy (2016-2025). This strategy presents agriculture as a business. The Feed Africa Strategy marks a strategic shift for the Bank towards agriculture as one of its top priorities and brings to the Bank a new and strong focus on AVCD. The vision of the strategy is to transform African agriculture into a competitive and inclusive agribusiness sector that creates wealth, improves lives and secures the environment. The Feed Africa Strategy promotes an integrated AVCD approach with the private sector at the heart of the development process, while also ensuring that the public sector facilitates investments in the agricultural sector, particularly when serving smallholders and small and medium-sized

enterprises (SME). The ultimate goals of the Bank’s interventions in AVCD are to reduce poverty, enhance food security and support Africa in becoming net food exporter. Inclusiveness is a special concern to ensure that benefits from ACVD reach poor farmers, women and young people.

The Feed Africa Strategy is highly relevant to documented AVCD best practice and enabling factors. While the Bank was a later entrant to the identification of value chains as an opportunity for inclusive growth than other multilateral organizations such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, other development partners have not taken as broad and sweeping approach to value chains in their policy and strategic architecture. The Bank’s Feed Africa Strategy provides a clear commitment to AVCD. The attention to ACVD is in line with other strategic imperatives and emerging research of value chains development. It provides clear directions for operations in terms of focus on key commodities, identification of enabling factors and the need for re-skilling for implementation. However, the evaluation questions whether the Feed Africa Strategy has a strong enough implementation focus in terms of a clear and robust operational methodology for competitive and inclusive VC interventions.

The Bank’s shift to AVCD is aligned with partner priorities. The policy and strategy review reveals that the Bank has formulated its policy and strategic directions in a manner that is responsive to its member countries and in line with wider macro policies and strategies for Africa such as the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) and the Agenda 2063. The AU 2063 Agenda provides a visionary direction to development in Africa that incorporates a focus on Africa’s global competitiveness, emphasizing

What has the Bank Done in Agriculture (2005–2016)?

25What has the Bank Done in Agriculture (2005–2016)?

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the importance of agriculture and the potential for value adding, cross-border trade, industrial hubs, and development of regional and commodity value chains.14 It focuses on SMEs and agribusinesses, scaling up of intra-Africa trade, and the need to engage women and youth in value addition and productivity advances. These features are consistent with AVCD and create an enabling environment for the Bank’s initiatives in value chains support. Development partners such as IFAD, FAO, GIZ and SNV have strategic commitment to value chains and have developed knowledge, guidelines and experience in implementation of inclusive AVCs. This provides an opportunity to develop partnerships to strengthen approaches to inclusive value chain for Feed Africa implementation.

Regional Integration Strategies. The Bank has consistently taken a strategic approach to assist its members to integrate their economies into relatively more viable entities that can compete in the global market. The Regional Integration Strategy (2009–2012) does not specifically mention value chains but does outline the critical role of trade (though not specifically in relation to agriculture), which is of importance in the context of global

value chains.15 The Regional Integration Policy and Strategy (RIPoS) 2014–2023 takes a more far-reaching approach and “is the first indication that the Bank is embedding a value chain approach within its strategic landscape and in its operations.”16 Key sectors for VCD support were seen to be agriculture, services, manufacturing and minerals. The RIPoS placed the identification and prioritization of value chain investment at the country level, but with reference to regional economic opportunities and economies of scale.

The Bank’s Portfolio

Bank’s annual commitments in the agriculture sector is on the rise. The Bank’s overall agricultural portfolio consisted of 283 interventions which amount to around UA 3.2 billion during the period 2005–2016.17 Among these interventions, 137 are closed or completed, 92 are ongoing and 54 are at approval stage. When examining the Bank’s annual net commitments to the Agricultural sector (Figure 4), the year 2010 is experienced the lowest annual commitments. This may be related to the fact that the Agricultural sector strategy (2010–

Number of interventionsNet loan (UA million)

0

100

200

300

400

500

0

5

10

20

25

15

30

35

40

201620152014201320122011201020092008200720062005

23

17

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37

19

5

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Figure 4: Annual net commitments and number of interventions (2005-2016)

UA, m

illion

s

Num

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2014) was presented in January 2010 and almost all interventions were approved only in the second half of the year. Similarly, the year 2016 — the adoption of the new Feed Africa Strategy (2016–2025) — shows a sudden decrease of commitments, possibly due to the time needed for preparation of the strategy. On the other side, the annual commitments had consistently increased from 2011 to 2014. Under the Feed Africa Strategy, the Bank plans to commit annually UA 2.4 billion. This is expected to dramatically increase the financial resource available for the agriculture sector.

Analysis of recent CSPs in the Bank shows that there is increased attention to value chain development at the country level.18 Each of the 15 CSPs reviewed for this evaluation assessed the extent to which they incorporated consideration of AVCD enablers. All recent CSPs have an explicit value chain focus, demonstrating that the strategic focus of the Bank and the Feed Africa Strategy are being reflected in national programming. The review shows that the main focus remains in infrastructure

and improved inputs, reduction of waste and production loss. All have mentioned inclusiveness and environmental aspects reflecting the Bank’s focus in this aspect. However, there are many gaps in terms of other enablers. Of importance are the low attention given to AVCD financing, business and marketing support considering that these are identified through literature as critical for AVCD success. For AVC financing, strategic interviews with the Bank staff indicate that this weakness has already been identified and that a new pilot investment in value chain financing is already being implemented across ten countries. Also, according to the internal stakeholders, the Bank’s recent restructuring has considered the need to increase capacity in private sector engagement, business and marketing skills.

Increasing profile of AVCD in programs and projects. The portfolio review has found that many Bank interventions have included aspects of support to value chains, though few are explicitly and completely AVCD initiatives. The proportion of

FVC PVC NVC

2011–20162005–2010

85%

6%

9%

48%

28%

24%

Figure 5: Proportion of agricultural value chain related interventions by year, 2005–2010 (N=67) compared with 2011-2016 (N=93)

Source: IDEV (2017) Evaluation of Bank Support to AVCD: Portfolio Review report. Data sourced from review of PARs, with projects categorized as Full Value Chain (FVC) when the key word “Value Chain” appears in the title and/or in the objective of the project; Partial Value Chain (PVC) when the key word appears only in one of the components (title of the components itself or description); not a value chain intervention (NVC) where key words not mentioned.

27What has the Bank Done in Agriculture (2005–2016)?

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investments that are explicitly AVCD interventions has increased over the evaluation period, building from a strong focus on infrastructure development in the earlier years of the evaluation period to a more market-oriented approach. This emerging approach is consistent with AVCD theory and shows that the Bank is already building a relevant portfolio. Of the 160 projects reviewed, 28 (17.5%) have focused on full value chains (FVC), 30 (18.7%) on partial value chains (PVC) and 102 non-value chains (63.7%). Across the

portfolio, there are few projects that exclusively focus on one commodity value chain. The majority of investments appear to be in multi-product chains, particularly in local food chains such as horticulture and small livestock, as well as forest products. Time period analysis showed that the number of interventions focusing on value chain development has increased substantially from 15% with full or partial value chains approach during 2005–2010 to 52% during 2011–2016 (Figure 5).

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29Success Factors: The Theory of Change for Agricultural Value Chains Development

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As indicated in the methodology section, a generic theory of change (ToC) was developed in order to articulate the pathways through which the Bank support to AVCD is expected to achieve the desired outputs, outcomes and impacts to ultimately contribute to the vision and objectives of the ‘Feed Africa’ Strategy.19

The Feed Africa Strategy has identified seven key enabling factors as shown in Figure 6. In the process of the evaluation, the ToC (including the seven enablers) were tested by using theory and practice. Based on the multiple lines of evidence examined (literature, previous evaluations and AfDB’s practice through country case studies),

the number of key enablers including those in the Feed Africa Strategy was extended to 10 factors for AVCD: five that are critical for all Bank value chain interventions (“fundamentals”) and five that should be present in relation to the needs of specific value chains to enable commercialization (“enablers”). Table 2 below shows these AVCD fundamentals and enablers.

Fundamentals: This classification relates to the extent to which the factors were seen as being essential for VC success across all case studies, and should be directly supported by the Bank due to their importance for achieving VC outcomes for all interventions. These five fundamentals are

Success Factors: The Theory of Change for Agricultural Value Chains Development

Unlocking the Guinea Savannah

(i.e. soybean, maize, dairy

poultry)

Achieving self sufficiency in key staples

(i.e. rice, fish)

Unlock the full potential

of cassava for Africa

Selectively substitute imports of

wheat

Move up the value chain in

tree crops

(cocoa, coffee, cashew, oil

palm)

Promote modern

horticulture and cotton -

based exports

Create a food-secure Sahel

(i.e. sorghum, millet, cowpea,

livestock)

Coordination of actors for agriculture & agribusiness development

Inclusivity, sustainability and nutrition

Improved agribusiness environment

Catalytic agricultural finance

Enabling infrastructure development

Productivity realization in downstream markets

Increased productivity

Enab

lers

Visions of success: key agricultural commodity value chains and agro-ecological zones

Figure 6: Feed Africa visions of success for commodity value chains

Source: AfDB (2016). Feed Africa: Strategy for Agricultural Transformation in Africa 2016–2025


Table 2: AVCD fundamentals and enablers

No. Factors of successful AVCD Key componentsFundamentals

1 Value chain analysis ❙Constraints of the VC ❙Understanding of the socioeconomic factors of the target group ❙ Stakeholder mapping and power relationship in the VC ❙ VA distribution ❙ Potential market ❙Risk assessment and mitigations

2 Profitability with value addition

❙ Financial and economic viability of added values in the VC

3 Responsiveness to market ❙Ability to respond and adapt to market requirements to secure business in the face of competition ❙Monitoring and evaluation system linked to VC

4 Inclusiveness ❙ Involvement of women, youth and the poor in VC ❙Attention given to women youth, and the poor in planning and implementation of interventions ❙ Evidence of benefits to women, youth and the poor

5 Sustained impact ❙ Technical ❙ Financial/economical ❙ Institutional ❙ Political, sociocultural

Key Enablers1 Infrastructure and

technology ❙ Irrigation, access roads, market sheds, storage houses, processing units ❙ Improved inputs (seeds, fertilizers, agricultural tools) ❙ ICT

2 Policy and regulatory (business) environment

❙Rules and regulation to improve business environment ❙ Policy dialogue to improve VC structure and governance ❙Activities to improve quality standards

3 Access to finance ❙Credit facility (in cash or kind) ❙Contract farming ❙Risk sharing facilities

4 Business support ❙Organizational capacity ❙Market access support ❙ Entrepreneur-related skills such as financial analysis and management, process monitoring and management, and human resource management ❙ Technical skills

5 Private sector participation and linkages among VC actors

❙ Private sector engagement ❙Collaboration among VC actors ❙ Trust building in VC ❙ Information management

31Success Factors: The Theory of Change for Agricultural Value Chains Development

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within the manageable interest of the Bank and should be applied across all of the Bank’s AVCD interventions under the Bank’s direct responsibility. These factors should be embedded in project design, continued throughout implementation and are essential for sustainability.

Enablers: This classification relates to important support that is required by most, but not necessarily all interventions. The enabling factors will all need to be in place in the context where AVCD interventions take place, though support will depend on the value chain(s) concerned. That is, where the enabling factors are already sufficiently in place or supported

by other development partners, the Bank investment may not be necessary. Similarly, during project design, the Bank may choose to include allocation of resources to support an enabler directly or may wish to partner with another institution to do so.

The final ToC was developed based on the above five fundamentals and enabling factors and formed the basis for the analysis of the Bank interventions. It is illustrated with its components in Annex 1, Figure A.1. In addition, Figure A.2 in Annex 1 describes the relationship between the seven enablers related to Feed Africa and the fundamentals and enablers described above.

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33Has the Bank Applied Good Practice Standards in Agricultural Value Chains Development?

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As noted in the methodology section, this evaluation takes a nontraditional approach in that it does not evaluate specific investments or operations, but rather assesses current operations in relation to their application of AVCD theory. The various sources of evidence were analyzed using the framework of fundamentals and key enablers described in the above section. Linking with standard evaluation criteria, relevance of Bank’s interventions in this report is considered to be the capacity to design and implement interventions with a “value chains focus,” taking into account three fundamentals — analyze the full value chain, remain responsive to market changes, and think profitability. The two other fundamentals — strategize for inclusiveness and plan for sustained impact — were addressed separately as a specific criterion, with the latter linking to the standard sustainability criterion. Finally, effectiveness was considered as delivering key enablers. Table 3 below summarizes the extent of focus on the fundamentals and delivering key enablers in country case studies (little effort, some efforts, and strong effort). Details of the supporting evidence base is provided in Annex 5.

Designing and Implementing Operations with a Value Chains Focus

This section reflects the extent to which the Bank’s support to AVCD has been relevant in relation to three out of the five fundamentals identified in the theory of change for AVCD. This is considered across the Bank’s strategies, policies and interventions that have been analyzed in the various stages of the evaluation, as well as from the country case studies. Given the specific importance of inclusiveness in

Bank’s strategies, this fundamental is addressed in a separate section below.

Lack of full value chain analyses and market studies have constrained relevance of Bank operations. The review of practitioner literature clearly shows that comprehensive analysis of the specific value chain is crucial to ensure relevance of interventions. Each value chain intervention is expected to ensure added value along the chain for as many actors as possible, without which improvement in one link of the chain may not be supported by other actors, and adversely affect achievement of expected outcomes. This requires careful context-specific value chain analysis including identification of constraints, distribution of added value among actors, stakeholder mapping, risks and assumptions. However, the country case studies found that in practice, few interventions actually conducted a sufficiently comprehensive analysis to ensure that interventions are relevant. For example, in DRC insufficient consideration was given to equipment for facilities constructed to enable viable operations.

In Zambia, there was a focus on increasing cashew production and infrastructure for processing but insufficient analysis of the interplay between the international and domestic markets and how increased production would be absorbed in the markets. These findings are similar to other evaluative evidences from development partners. For example, AsDB's evaluation of AVCD highlighted the importance of robust analysis of the key constraints and necessary linkages in the targeted value chains, and the importance of supporting all aspects of the value chain including linking transportation and other infrastructure with market information,

Has the Bank Applied Good Practice Standards in Agricultural Value Chains Development?


The Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock and Cashew Growers Association of Zambia (CGAZ) formulated the National Cashew Development Strategy (NCDS) 2012–2016. The NCDS document attempts to put in place a strategic framework for the revival of the cashew subsector, expected to follow a value chain approach that is underpinned by strong private stakeholders’ participation. The strategy was the basis of the Government of Zambia request for financial support from the AfDB for the development of the Cashew infrastructure development project (CIDP) in the Western Province.

However, although chapter 2.1 of the NCDS is called "Cashew Value Chain Analysis", it is incomplete to be considered as such. That is, the assessment of the sector remains too general. No proper stakeholder map is proposed. Added value distribution along the value chain is not mapped. Moreover, no complementary VC analysis was undertaken during the project planning phase and limited risk identification was conducted. Costs of production, necessary investment capacity or returns on investment according to different types of equipment and stages of the VC are not calculated. Marketing data available are rather scanty. There is limited available knowledge concerning by-product processing and economic interest. Such a situation is not conducive to the identification of relevant activities to support the development of the sector. Indeed, without a minimum level of economic analysis of the various stages of a value chain, one would not be in a position to take such basic decisions such as what type of equipment are needed to develop the activity or what are the necessary volumes of activity to be economically sustainable and competitive.

Overall, lack of VC analysis is probably the single most important factor impeding a satisfactory implementation of an AVCD approach.

Box 2: Zambia – Cashew nut value chains

Table 3: Evidence of AVCD fundamentals and enablers in country case studies

Wheat (Morocco)

Cassava(Liberia)

Rice(Mozambique)

Dairy (Rwanda)

Beef (DRC)

Tomato(Kenya)

Cocoa (Côte d’Ivoire)

Cashew(Zambia)

Fish(Uganda)

Fundamentals

Value chain analysis ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Profitability with value addition ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Responsiveness to market ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Inclusiveness ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Sustained Impact ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Enablers

Infrastructure and technology ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Policy and regulatory environment ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Access to finance ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Business support ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Private sector and linkages of VC actors ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

● Strong effort: available evidence shows that the Bank has made significant support.● Some effort: evidence shows that the Bank made some support but inadequate. ● Little effort: there is no evidence that the Bank has addressed the fundamental/enabler.


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enterprise support and policy or regulatory reform.20 IFAD’s evaluation also found that there had been inadequate analysis prior to commencement of VCD’s with insufficient consideration of specific markets targeted for investment and therefore interventions had limited achievement of their intended outcomes.

Flexibility in responding to market changes was not adequately considered in design and implementation modalities. AVCD cannot be planned fully in advance at the commencement of an intervention. During the course of implementation, market factors and actors may change (e.g. export price fluctuations for cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire and cashew in Zambia). Therefore, it is critical that implementers of interventions have the capacity to respond to market signals and review the original analyses to assess if they are still relevant. Adaptation to changing contexts, situations, actors or market demand may require changes in expertise of project personnel during implementation and a robust monitoring and evaluation mechanism.

Thus, this fundamental factor calls for robust monitoring and evaluation system, and room for adaptive management in project design that allows projects to be responsive to changes in the value chain context or markets for the targeted commodities. The country case studies found that there was insufficient M&E to assess the extent of impact and sustainability. During implementation, the lack of consideration of responsiveness to market needs caused sustainability issues.

So, monitoring and evaluation should seek greater linkage with the theory of change associated with VC support. Considering that many projects are only in their inception phase, it was not so clear how much attention is given to monitoring and evaluation. However, it appears that the efforts made are not fully oriented towards developing and refining a VC approach.

Other practices emphasize attention to the market dynamics. World Bank (2010) indicate that market dynamics matter and require analysis at

an appropriate scale and resolution. Continuous learning and adaptability is also identified as an inherent approach in market dynamics for achieving success in value chain development.21

Profitability of added value in the value chain is not clearly defined. The AfDB support tends to focus on the primary production segment with the largest proportion of its resources being dedicated to infrastructure, equipment and inputs in support of production (irrigation, seeds and seedlings) and to a lesser extent on processing and marketing (i.e. bulking centers, landing sites, milk collection centers and market sheds). Few projects really strengthen the links among actors (public, private, farmer’s organizations and civil society) and foster agreements between them (contracts and trust building). Across the nine case study countries, all interventions considered included some support to increase production. Examples include improved cattle breeds along with capacity building in the Rwanda dairy industry, and provision of irrigation infrastructure and distribution of certified seeds in the wheat industry in Morocco. While production was supported in some way in all of the nine commodities22 studied, value addition was supported in only six of them (Zambia, Rwanda, DRC, Liberia, Uganda and Mozambique). These mainly related to provision or rehabilitation of market infrastructure, processing unit as well as some training and extension for commercialization. For example, support to the meat sub-sector in DRC included rehabilitation of slaughter facilities and markets, while support to the cassava value chain in Liberia included processing and training for commercialization. In addition, due to lack of value chain analysis, the profitability of added values is also not clearly defined in the Bank’s interventions. FAO (2014) set profitability as one of its guiding principles for upgrading a food value chains “in terms of economic sustainability (competitiveness, commercial viability, growth), the upgraded VC model should provide greater (or at least not reduced) profits or incomes relative to the status quo for each stakeholder, and these should be sustained over time. Unless all stakeholders along the VC benefit, the model will not be sustainable even in the short term.”


For the case studies that did not focus on value addition, there was reliance on single commodity chains rather than giving attention to diversification, by-product use and improved business practices in marketing (e.g. processing, packaging, quality and pricing differentials), for instance, in Côte d’Ivoire the cocoa value chain targeted the main chocolate market but paid little attention to product differentiation.

Lessons learned from the evaluation case studies are that most AVCD interventions to date focused heavily on increase in commodity production, without sufficiently considering efficiency and profitability. In some cases (e.g. Liberia and Kenya) this caused glut in the market or did not achieve the expected quality in relation to consumer demand, and resultant benefits to business success along the chain. A profitability focus involves technical innovation in production, processing and marketing. This may require greater focus on product and processing yields but also the efficiency of distribution mechanisms and market information, pricing, packaging, quality or consumer feedback mechanisms to improve response to market demand to achieve real profits to targeted producers and processors.

Strategizing for Inclusiveness

This section examines the extent to which inclusiveness as a fundamental factor was incorporated into the Bank’s policies and strategies and aligned across the portfolio.

Bank strategies demonstrated overarching intentions towards inclusiveness in AVCD. Over the evaluation period of 10 years, there has been increasing focus on inclusiveness in general and inclusive ACVD in particular. Gender aspects have been evident as a crosscutting factor since 2000, building towards the Feed Africa Strategy 2016, which highlights inclusiveness for women and youth. The Bank’s Gender Strategy 2014–2018 identifies three pillars for action: (i) legal status and property rights; (ii) economic empowerment; and (iii) knowledge management and capacity development. These are strongly aligned with the literature related to value chain development interventions.23 Recently, the Bank released its Strategy for Jobs for Youth in Africa 2016–202524 which places clear emphasis on the opportunities that can arise through VCD for young people. The Country Strategy Papers also clearly demonstrate intention towards inclusiveness as an enabling factor for AVCD.

Export and processing of tomatoes was an objective of the Bank’s intervention. However, due to the dynamics of the tomato sector, characterized by unfavourable VC structure, in Kenya these strategies are not realistic. The interventions have been implemented considering push factors (supply side) instead of pull factors (demand side of the product).

The implementation teams of the interventions revealed that tomato processing was considered an important option to even out availability of tomatoes throughout the year. In Kenya, there are various tomato processors but most of them are not performing well due to low local demand and competition from cheaper imports. In addition, the availability of the tomatoes varieties suitable for processing is absent in Kenya. Farmers only produce varieties for the fresh market. As a result, processors use regular tomatoes for processing that they buy in times of over supply at a low price. During period of low supply they are not able to afford expensive tomatoes and the processing plants are left underutilized. The evaluation team only considers processing to be feasible if the cost price is competitive with imports and if the VC actors are dedicated to producing and sourcing agreements.

Exporting fresh tomatoes was mentioned by project implementers and policy makers as a strategy to fetch higher prices (e.g. EU market). However, exporting tomatoes to Europe by air is too expensive to be viable due to weight of tomatoes, and exporting tomatoes to the regional market (neighbouring countries) is challenging since transportation by road is lengthy and adds significant costs.

Box 3: Kenya – Tomato value chains


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Bank interventions included some design features to support inclusiveness but did not go far enough in designing strategies for inclusiveness. The portfolio review has found that 63% of the interventions reviewed (99 out of 160) within the agricultural portfolio have design elements to address the issue of inclusiveness in terms of gender, youth or other vulnerable groups. The review found that more recent designs with a VCD approach link clearly vulnerable groups to market, as in the Malawi Agricultural Infrastructure and Youth Agribusiness Project. This project supports “youth entrepreneurship, storage agro-processing and value addition through market linkages and trade facilitation, linking farmers with agro-processors, building bulk commodity network, eliminating middlemen, and exerting group effects on processors for better prices.”25 The review also showed that many interventions applied a quota of women and/or youth at the appraisal stage.26 However, the country case study synthesis report concluded that the Bank’s processes seem to lack a holistic approach to inclusiveness looking not only at the position of vulnerable populations all along the VC but also at their capacity to access productive assets (water, capital, knowledge and land), level of literacy, capacity to be formally represented and the social norms they are confronted to within their communities and households. More specifically in Mozambique, quotas ensure that

vulnerable population attend the capacity building sessions, but no additional measures appear to have been developed to ensure any benefit beyond participation occurs. Similarly in Liberia, quotas have ensured that vulnerable populations receive training and cassava cuttings, but the benefits do not seem to extend much further. Though added value within the cassava value chain will most probably increase, how well it will be distributed among value chain actors is still uncertain. In DRC, although women inclusiveness is an explicit objective, other vulnerable groups are not identified or involved and there are no strategies for ensuring access to benefits for young people.

Inclusiveness requires understanding of vulnerable populations. The literature on inclusive AVCD outlines that the approach to pro-poor, gender and youth inclusiveness lies in the effective analysis of the current status of the target population or of the targeted value chain and the role that the poor or other vulnerable target groups play in that chain. For example, it is important to understand factors such as the power relationships and land rights that exist. Guidelines on gender inclusive VCD highlight that it is important to understand and respond to both the ways that women and men participate in value chain activities, and the way that gains of the value chain are distributed.27 Evaluative evidence on AVCD confirms the importance of gender-sensitive analysis

Women peel and sort out cashew nuts (Zambia). Youths transport milk (Rwanda). Women dry mukene fish (Uganda)

Box 4: Inclusiveness in value chains


at design and throughout implementation, as well as preparing and implementing Gender Action Plans to ensure that intended impacts reach women and adverse consequences are avoided.28 Evidences from case studies show that some projects had developed gender plans (e.g. Zambia and Liberia). In Zambia cashew nut value chains, gender issues have been considered within the planning process mainly through the allocation of quotas (50% of women will take part in training sessions; 30% to benefit from project’s credit facility. However, it is far from clear if participation will be enough to include equal benefit among participating women according to poverty level or vulnerability.

Inclusiveness was not sufficiently budgeted for or integrated into implementation and M&E mechanisms. It was not clear from the portfolio review how the analysis on gender and youth issues that are included in the design are managed during the implementation of the projects/programs,29 or whether there is an allocation of project cost to specifically support inclusiveness. It is important for value chain analysis to disaggregate data by different actors in the chain, including women to understand how the intervention impacts particular social groups.30 Not all projects in the case studies include a monitoring and evaluation system that allows for the collection of data disaggregated according to gender or age. For example, the project completion report for the Livestock Infrastructure Support Program in Rwanda (2015) identifies a lack of disaggregated data which makes tracking benefit to vulnerable groups challenging. The country case studies have found that inclusiveness is not sufficiently taken into account in the design of Bank support and effects of Bank interventions on vulnerable groups remain limited. For example, in Côte d’Ivoire, despite the opportunities offered by the cocoa sector to women, youth and vulnerable populations, notably in the production and initial processing stages along the VC, the Bank interventions in the cocoa value chain do not focus on these vulnerable groups.

Evidence of AVCD bringing benefits to women, youth and other vulnerable groups is mixed. Literature suggests that shortening supply chains through bypassing exploitative traders can have multiple benefits in pro-poor initiatives around increasing efficiency31 and enabling access to new markets.32 However, it cannot be expected that all groups will benefit equally from VCD interventions.33 Country case studies have found that ensuring participation of more vulnerable segments of the population within project activities (by assigning quotas) is not enough to ensure that they benefit proportionally. As noted above, quota in Zambia and Liberia did not clearly lead to direct benefits. In large infrastructure projects in Mozambique, Morocco and DRC, gender and other inclusiveness-related factors were not considered or tracked, so it was difficult to ascertain if any benefits had reached vulnerable target groups (Annex 3).

Planning for Sustained Impact

This section considers the extent to which the fifth AVCD fundamental identified in the ToC has been put in practice by the Bank.

It is too early to assess sustainability of the Bank’s interventions, though evidence indicates that performance was variable among projects. Most of the interventions are not matured so it was not possible to assess the extent to which interventions and impact were, or were likely to be sustained. However, practitioner literature suggests that given the dynamism of markets, greater focus needs to be placed on resilience of producers and processors to respond to changing market needs. Another aspect is the level of ownership and use of project interventions. This is an aspect that requires further investigation and tracking in future. The country case study synthesis examined different sustainability criteria34 and found that sustainability varied among projects. It has identified several aspects of project implementation that could be improved to enhance sustainability (Annex 4).


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Insufficient ownership and limited functionality of facilities were found to constrain sustainability. In various case studies, infrastructure facilities were not well planned and did not have the full support of local producers or private sector actors. This led to the facilities being underutilized in the absence of a clear sustainability mechanism in place, as seen in the meat processing facilities in DRC and some MCC in Rwanda. Similarly, a fish landing site which was built by a development partner remains idle on Lake Albert in Uganda.

However, some positive results were also seen in incorporating infrastructure maintenance into project operations to ensure ongoing use of facilities such as the irrigation structures in Mozambique, Morocco and Kenya that will be managed through water users associations.

Insufficient analysis of VC dynamics was another hindering factor. As noted earlier in this report, a major gap in the Bank’s approach to AVCD is the lack of full value chain analysis at the design stage. The issues identified with insufficient market and capacity analyses at design lead to gaps in effectiveness, inefficient use of resources and eventually lower than expected results. The country case studies found that insufficient analysis of VC dynamics has resulted in misdirected investments. For example,

irrigation systems in Kenya, processing equipment in Liberia that could not be serviced locally, and plans to build a large scale processing plant for cashew in Zambia. In the latter two cases, it was found that support to existing, smaller plants would have been preferable in terms of ensuring sustainability of impact. For this reason, closer attention to potential pathways to sustainability at the design stage is likely to yield better and more sustainable results by and beyond project completion.

Inadequate participation of stakeholders during implementation limits sustainability. The literature links sustainability strongly to the extent of ownership by value chain actors. Responding to value chain dynamics requires strong engagement of private sector actors and active linkages between producers, processors and wholesalers/retailers. In the example of Kenya with tomato production, there were market concerns amongst private sector actors that were well known in terms of seasonality and demand fluctuations. If these had been factored earlier on in the process, improved results could have been achieved through a more robust integration with the value chain. Greater dialogue between private actors and producers at an early stage and during implementation would have led to stronger results and leave the situation at project completion with greater chance of longer term success.

In Zambia, 75% of smallholder farmers in cashew sector nut are women. Women and youth provide labor for picking the nuts but the majority are involved in processing of the nut either as employee or entrepreneur. Women mostly manage the trees. Access to land, finance, and skills are main challenges for women. Another challenge is the income from the cashew farming is mostly controlled by the men.

In Uganda, most women work in processing of fish (drying, salting, packing and smoking) particularly mukene fish but get low returns. Similarly, is the case of cassava value chains in Liberia (of course, some women are also involved in production). Majority of rice farmers in Mozambique are women, but not in processing. In Rwanda milk sector, the youth participate in transporting fresh milk to milk collection centers (MCC) on bikes. However, the modes of transport needs improvement, e.g. trucks with cooler. Youth still need training, capital and land.

There is also a risk of ‘elite capture’ of the benefit of the value chains development. Big farmers who can access capital may benefit the most from value chain development than the youth and poor famers/women. This points to the need of intervention designs to clarify the targeting mechanism in improving value chains. A case in point is Zambia cashew nut example stated above.

Box 5: Agricultural value chains offers varies opportunities for women and youth


The green growth approach is important for AVCD, though not yet applied at the intervention level. The ‘green growth’ model for development recognizes the need to create a stronger link between natural resources management, government, and industrial and commercial practices.35 In AVCD, the green growth model has been promoted as a way to deliver effective development that is also inclusive and resource efficient.36 The Feed Africa Strategy emphasizes the importance of climate change, stating that “the escalating challenge of climate change means that climate smart agriculture (CSA) is now no longer an option but a core necessity of any strategy to deliver results, even in the near term.”37 As outlined below, a green growth approach is not yet normalized throughout Bank interventions.

Environment and natural resources concerns have not been adequately managed during implementation. The case studies have identified a set of environment related sustainability issues that remain largely overlooked in the interventions reviewed. Climate change adaptation related innovations are absent from the various projects visited. Even in a project such as the Baixo Limpopo Irrigation and Climate Resilience Project (BLICRP) which integrates climate resilience in its denomination, the issue is limited to managing climatic risk through the introduction (or improvement) of irrigation and drainage. In Côte d’Ivoire, sustainability remains a challenge for the cocoa value chain, in the sense that no cocoa varieties resistant and/or adapted to climate change have been developed. The management of waste through the development of by-product (shell oil from cashew for instance) is given limited attention. Organic production, certification and marketing are often mentioned but do not appear to have been put into practice as no results in terms of specific organic production are registered. There is a tendency for projects to advocate or more input-intensive methods of production without taking into account the possible negative environmental effects of the

use of chemicals (e.g. rice in Mozambique, cashew in Zambia, and cage fish farming in Uganda). Most stakeholders met during the field mission appeared to give limited thought to environmental issues.

Adaptation and resilience to climate change are frequently mentioned at the level of project documents, but limited resources are allocated to support technologies better adapted to more arid climates. None of the projects studied has allocated any resources to such activities or were proactive in partnering with other progressive organizations. Such issues are perceived as problems to be avoided rather than opportunities for driving green growth. Reflections on the market potential of organic farming to generate added value for VC stakeholders appear rare although several value chains (cashew, cocoa, and even wheat) could most probably benefit from them. The opportunities to generate biogas from cassava waste or fertilizer from livestock manure do not seem to have attracted attention, despite the opportunity for both value added to VCD and the associated environmental benefits.

Delivering Key Enablers

This section considers to what extent the Bank’s interventions have addressed the key enablers related to AVCD as per the ToC. All interventions in the case studies were designed before the Feed Africa Strategy so the analysis does not consider the effectiveness of the interventions per se, rather it assesses the extent to which the five key enablers identified in the ToC (availability of appropriate infrastructure and technology, conducive policy and regulatory environment, availability of appropriate business support, access to finance, private sector participation and linkages between VC actors) were supported by the Bank to achieve successful AVCD. The evidence for this assessment mainly comes from the analysis of the portfolio and country case studies with respect to the selected commodities.


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Availability of appropriate infrastructure and technology

The Bank has delivered a wide variety of hard infrastructure, but their underutilization hampers achievement of expected results. The provision of market based infrastructure is mentioned most frequently in literature as the enabling factor across the broad scope of value chain support. Thus, infrastructure is a critical component to AVCD and too often agricultural communities lack basic services (e.g. lack of storage facilities or undeveloped road systems to promote efficient delivery and reduce wastage).38 Infrastructure itself is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to achieve better results in VCD. It should be linked to production and market information to achieve desired results.39 Recent Bank interventions that specifically mentioned development of agricultural value chains often include some components that link infrastructure to market or production e.g. the construction of storage and marketing facilities as storehouses/warehouses, rural market sheds, multipurpose centers and provision of post-harvest equipment.

The country case studies confirmed the Bank’s significant investments in a wide variety of infrastructure that relate to production, processing and marketing, as well as market access, such as feeder roads (DRC), markets and processing facilities (Zambia and DRC), and irrigation infrastructure (Kenya, Morocco and Mozambique). Case studies showed that overall these infrastructure components made a positive contribution towards strengthening the enabling environment for AVCD. There were some areas where effectiveness was questioned in terms of the outcomes achieved from constructing large processing facilities compared to strengthening existing, smaller ones (particularly in DRC for meat processing where facilities were underutilized and in Uganda where there were plans to construct facilities without due consideration for market size and natural resource capability.

Investments in research and technology mainly related to technical aspects of production. In developing the agricultural value chains, investment in innovations, research and technology

is imperative. Technology packages often are developed in close collaboration with agricultural research and extension partners as well as farmers. For instance, the multinational project CGIAR — Support to Agricultural Research focuses on promoting dissemination and adoption of existing (ready-to-go) improved agricultural technologies across each value chain. Extension workers are engaged in technical and methodological aspects of value chain development and out-scaling of innovations are done through farmer-to-farmer exchange and strengthened extension systems, and mass communication. In Liberia, the Bank supported dissemination of improved variety of cassava cutting and planting techniques in close collaboration with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the Central Agricultural Research Institute (CARI).

Interventions have given less attention to provision of market information services and lagged behind in using ICT opportunities. Provision of information services related to AVC development is generally included within a market-access project component, the purpose of which is to provide feedback on prices to producers who will allow them to establish a stronger negotiating position.40 The case studies have found that some consideration was given to market information although this was usually insufficient, as in Liberia where cassava diversification was supported but insufficient consideration was given to market information resulting in glut of product in the market and reduced profit margin to producers. Also in Zambia where there was an opportunity to access local markets but market information was focused on export only without considering alternative, more accessible markets. For certain issues, innovative technologies offer low hanging fruits which the Bank AVCD interventions do not appear to be harvesting. For example, in terms of information flows and reduction of asymmetry of information among VC stakeholders, ICT offers many opportunities (distance training, market information, climate and harvest forecast) which presently the Bank interventions are only very partially exploiting. Mobile money and


agricultural insurance are further innovations made possible by ICT which would merit greater attention.

Conducive policy and regulatory environment

Support for the development of a conducive regulatory environment was inadequate. In the Bank’s agricultural portfolio, only 33% of the 160 interventions reviewed has supported creation of a conducive policy environment in agriculture sector. The projects and programs supported these areas in various ways including aligning regional trade policy with national policies, reinforcement of the legal and institutional framework (Burkina Faso),41 development of appropriate policies on agricultural mechanization (Gambia),42 and strengthening of farmer’s organizations through institutional and organizational development (Cameroon).43

This limited support was confirmed by case studies, for which only three out of nine were found to support conducive policies and regulations. These were surveillance for illegal fishing and a fishery conservation policy in Uganda, quality standards of milk in Rwanda, and national policy dialogue relating to the wheat value chain in Morocco. In Kenya, the country case study concluded that the conducive environment for the tomato VC remains a challenge and limits tangible impact. In practice, the most constraining factor — unfavorable tomato VC structure — remains present. In DRC, the focus was on infrastructure, and although access to finance was tackled no substantial effect to the regulatory environment (policies, quality norms, customs, etc.) is observed in relation to the Bank’s interventions, and the business climate is said to remain negative. Also, little evidence was found in the case studies on policy dialogue between the Bank and local authorities for developing a conducive environment

0

20

40

60

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South AsiaSub-SaharanAfrica

East Asia& Paci�c

Middle East& North Africa

Latin America& Caribbean

Europe &Central Asia

OECDHigh-Income

70

6056

50 49 47 45

GLOBAL AVERAGE: 55

Figure 7: Sub-Saharan African countries rank low on Enable the Business of Agriculture (EBA), though better than South Asia

Source: Enabling the Business of Agriculture 2017. Report highlights Booklet. World Bank, Washington, DC. License: Creative Commons Attributions, CC BY 3.0. IGO.Note: The EBA17 distance-to-frontier (DTF) is the average of the DTF scores of the following topics: seed, fertilizer, machinery, finance, markets, transport, water and information communication and technology.

ENB17 - DTF score


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for AVCD, such as addressing concerns related to access to land in Zambia for cashew small-holders and in Mozambique where irrigation changes land values.

Progress was however achieved in countries supported through budget support (Morocco and Rwanda). The progress made by Morocco related to the business environment is clearly demonstrated by the progress it has registered with respect to the doing business index.44 More specifically, the Green Morocco Plan (PMV) is by nature a national framework to strengthen an environment conducive to AVCD. In particular, it contributes to: (i) Public-private partnerships; (ii) Reinforcement of the agricultural insurance system; (iii) Strengthening of the legal framework and promotion of the aggregation process; and (iv) Setting up of agro poles and promotion of Moroccan agricultural products at national and international levels. In Rwanda, substantial effects to the regulatory environment (policies, quality norms, customs, etc.) in relation to the Bank supported interventions have been observed. It is interesting to note that these two

cases correspond to the countries which function through budget support.

Globally, the World Bank report (2017) shows that Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the regions lagging behind in Enable Business in Agriculture (EBA) scores (Figure 7). The report shows that countries from these regions have less than half of the regulatory good practices on average. It is most time-consuming to complete the process of exporting agricultural goods in Sub-Saharan African countries, taking 6.0 days on average, and the procedural documents are most expensive in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, costing 2.5% income per capita.

Availability of appropriate business support

A key lesson learned from the literature, is that successful VCD interventions require actors to improve capacity in business-related skills such as process monitoring and management, financial analysis and management and human resource management, as well as technical skills. The case

Cassava processors in Liberia are producing a more diverse range of products with project support but marketing remains an issue due to lack of market analysis and business support.

Box 6: Cassava processing in Liberia

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studies have confirmed that constraints to VCD arose due to lack of commercial orientation of farmers and public sector partners (e.g. in DRC where meat processing support was infrastructure-related and did not sufficiently support analysis or link to markets). AVCD often requires a higher level of enterprise skills than that for small-scale enterprises and may involve establishment and strengthening of producer associations or processing and marketing ventures.

Greater attention is needed to support market access. Interventions supporting producers to achieve a higher margin and profitability for their production includes: strengthening market linkages and networks that connect farmers/producers with other stakeholders; constructing new market facilities; building capacity for improved marketing; and promoting different business models that increase value and competitiveness (e.g. contract farming). The portfolio review has found that of the 160 Bank’s interventions assessed, 101 projects and/or programs (63%) support “market access.” However, the term is used broadly and it is not clear whether market access mainly corresponds to physical access, as covered under infrastructure or the business support that is required to enhance capacity for producers and processors to create and maintain market access and linkages in a way that generates greater market penetration and business profitability. For example, in Liberia, cassava production increased, and products were diversified with support but marketing remains an issue.

Inadequate business support limited the realization of benefits to smaller producers and

processors. The country case studies found that business support of some form was provided in approximately six of the nine cases (Mozambique, Zambia, Liberia, Rwanda, Kenya and Morocco). In Rwanda and Morocco, business support services were improved through institutional strengthening of producer organizations such as the dairy cooperatives in Rwanda and the water users’ associations in Morocco. This support included knowledge sharing, and support for improved business and resource management practices. In Kenya, support was more directed to supply chain distribution and quality management through the tomato pack houses. In Mozambique, the support was delivered directly by the main company that was operating as the consolidator for contract farmers. The company provided extension staff who worked with farmers to generate the needed quality and quantity of product. There was training and support for commercialization of cassava in Liberia (e.g. packaging and labeling support), however, there appears to be limited related mentoring for farmers to apply what they had learned e.g. business planning, direct marketing, etc. which meant that products were not able to generate the level of sales expected. The lack of business support prevents producers and small processors from engaging with larger private sector actors in a way that accrues net benefit to the target group.

Access to finance

The Bank facilitated access to finance through different mechanisms. Access to finance is one of the key requirements for the success of value chain development. This includes credit for agricultural

The microfinance industry in Mozambique has grown but has a very small outreach. There are currently about 55,000 rural borrowers, who account for about 1% of total credit offered by the banking system. It remains mostly an urban phenomenon with most borrowers based in the capital, Maputo. Inadequate access to credit constitutes a gap within the rice VC, particularly at the production level. Producers do not have enough investment capacity to pay for land preparation, inputs, labor for harvesting or processing. Besides, the conditions for obtaining rural credit (collateral, paperwork, etc.) are not suited to smaller producers, particularly as agriculture is considered risky and banks are reluctant to support it. Consequently, despite the improved infrastructure facilities, the capacity of poor farmers to reap the potential benefits is seriously constrained.

Box 7: Mozambique: Access to credit in rice value chain


input suppliers, producers (farmers), transporters, processors, wholesalers/retailers and marketing agents. It can be in the form of credit for increasing production, credit in kind, lines of credit and other means of funding projects, such as matching grants. The portfolio review shows that there are a range of financial intermediation services already used across the Bank portfolio. The designs show that credit access may be through direct support or through institutional strengthening such as capacity building in credit appraisal, credit management and product development. Also, accredited trainers may be engaged to train credit officers (Northern Rural Growth Program in Ghana). The support to access to financing may also include assistance in the preparation of requests to apply for credit (Lake Tanganyika Development Project in Zambia) and to secure financing through the credit mechanism established by the intervention (Programme de developement des chaines de valeurs agricoles in Cameroon).

Where access to finance is improved, substantial benefits are achieved. Access to finance was slightly more evident in the case study countries than in the wider portfolio, with five of the nine cases involved a variety of financial intermediation support. For instance, in Rwanda, support was provided to dairy cooperatives to access finance to support members. In the DRC, the project liaised with a microfinance institution to increase access to finance in the project area. In Morocco, the project assisted farmers to access agricultural insurance which increased their likelihood of accessing formal credit. In Rwanda, to reduce risk of financial losses, finance was provided in kind (one cow per poor family). Through this scheme, 16,072 families received cows with repayments deducted through the cooperatives and which contributed substantially to increased dairy production in the country by 59.6% and contributed to poverty reduction (from 44.9% to 39.1%) in beneficiary families.45 On the other hand, in Mozambique, access to credit was limited and severely affected the extent of benefits to poor farmers.

The Bank has also initiated recently a Risk Sharing mechanism to attract commercial banks to lend

to stallholders in the agriculture sector. Interviews within the Bank reveal that a new pilot investment in value chain financing is being implemented across ten countries.

Private sector participation and linkages among VC actors

An active AVCD intervention requires good collaboration among value chain actors. Public sector support can enhance AVCD but requires good working relationships, particularly with private sector actors and other relevant organizations such as farmers’ associations, rural banks and input suppliers (e.g. success in Rwanda with milk collection centers, processors’ and farmers’ associations, and challenges with credit access in Mozambique where linkages were not effectively established leading to constrained outcomes). Any intervention in AVCD requires stakeholder analysis and transparent and effective partnership management.

Bank interventions generally shows lack of private sector engagement and market orientation. The country case studies found that effectiveness of the Bank interventions was constrained by the lack of commercial connections within projects. This is explained by the fact that most case study projects had not been specifically AVCD-focused at design. For instance, the Rural Infrastructure Development Support project (PADIR) in DRC was designed in 2010 as a rural infrastructure project and did not have a specific focus on beef market. In Mozambique, the Baixa Limpopo Irrigation and Climate Resilience Project (BLICRP, designed in 2010, invested in irrigation infrastructure and did not specifically aim to support rice marketing. Yet these projects did aim to contribute towards productivity and agricultural commercialization. In both of these cases, positive outputs were achieved in terms of improved infrastructure facilities, productivity increase, and added value creation (through intermediary cost reduction and quality upgrading). However, facilities constructed are not used to their full potential due to insufficient consideration of market factors in


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achieving expected commercialization outcomes. This could have been addressed early on in the project if private sector actors had been engaged in determining market needs and size. Similarly, the Kenya case study found that the project was effective in constructing irrigation facilities but the production “push” into the tomato market failed to understand the dynamics of the horticulture market and the challenges faced by the private sector in processing and exporting of tomatoes.

Support to linkages among actors was minimal. More generally, the creation of linkages between stakeholders and the strengthening of networks

of VC actors are given insufficient attention while this is considered in the literature to be at the core of a value chain approach. In some of the case study countries (Liberia, Zambia and Mozambique), the level of coordination and communication among value chain actors was considered weak. The only example that the case studies found in which improved coordination and partnerships was realized, occurred in support to dairy farmers’ cooperatives in Rwanda. The cooperatives formed a collective voice for dairy farmers and were able to provide economies of scale and product quality that was then marketed by the cooperatives for the farmers.

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49Conclusions and Recommendations

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Conclusions

Agricultural value chains development has been a growing and evolving approach for the Bank, and is the cornerstone of the current Feed Africa Strategy. This is in line with partner priorities and has evolved along with increasing global attention on AVCD as an approach to improve the lives of people involved in agricultural economies. As a result of this increased attention, there is a growing theoretical knowledge base on VCD generally as well as an increasing range of practical experience and written guidelines for AVCD. The overarching theory is that targeted interventions in specific points of a value chain can result in generation of added value across the chain as a whole, and thus achieve a range of positive outcomes for the various value chain actors. At the same time, for AVCD to be successful in achieving its intended development outcomes, theoretical aspects need to be grounded in robust understanding of the context, always involving value chain analysis specific to commodity, market and location. In this regard, an AVCD approach is relevant for the Bank, and is already emerging in the portfolio.

The evaluation has identified five fundamentals and five enablers for AVCD interventions. The evaluation demonstrates that AVCD is a complex approach that requires considerations of multiple factors, strategic approaches and detailed planning to achieve expected benefits. The evaluation process led to the identification of five fundamentals that should be applied in all AVCD interventions, namely: (i) careful context-specific value chain analysis to ensure value-added along the VC; (ii) inclusiveness for poor farmers, women, youth and other vulnerable groups in both participation and benefits sharing; (iii) flexibility and responsiveness to changing

contexts and market needs; (iv) focus primarily on profitability and efficiency of the value chain; and (v) apply strategies to ensure the sustainability of outcomes. Further, five enabling factors that are context-specific to ensure success of AVCD are identified: (i) availability of appropriate infrastructure and technology; (ii) conducive policy and regulatory environment pertaining to the targeted VC; (iii) availability of appropriate business support services to strengthen the skills of VC actors; (iv) access to finance for VC actors to make required investments to achieve increased profitability; and (v) private sector engagement and working relationships among VC actors.

While the key enablers for AVCD are evident throughout the Bank’s interventions, the evaluation indicates an opportunity to strengthening the VC fundamentals. The strategic review and case studies show that the focus of the Feed Africa Strategy on AVCD is relevant to good practices around AVCD. They also show that the Bank is already supporting some of the fundamentals and enablers identified for successful AVCD, despite no formal Bank value chain approach being in place before the Feed Africa Strategy. The most effective support is in the areas of infrastructure and financing where it has been applied.

However, all will require strengthening to achieve the intended outcomes of the Feed Africa Strategy via an AVCD approach. In particular, to increase relevance, greater focus can be given to generating a clear approach and guidance on how to incorporate AVCD features in project design, particularly in applying value chain analysis and focusing on responsiveness to markets and profitability. From the inclusiveness perspective,

Conclusions and Recommendations


the literature review and case studies demonstrated that without deliberate efforts, interventions are unlikely to be inclusive and have benefits equitably distributed. While almost all interventions address inclusiveness to some extent in design, it is not yet adequate to ensure equitable participation and benefit sharing. Inclusiveness is not sufficiently taken into account in the design of Bank support, and the effects of Bank AVCD-related interventions on vulnerable groups remain unsubstantial.

With respect to the enablers, there are key areas for improved performance, particularly in partnerships with the private sector, business development support and interventions in the policy and regulatory environment. Finally, although it is too early to assess sustainability of many AVCD interventions, the case studies show that environmental sustainability and resilience to climate change are not yet sufficiently addressed in interventions. In addition, underutilization of hard infrastructures and their management are found to be the main issue to tackle.

Recommendations

The evaluation proposes six overarching recommendations, supported by indicative actions, to strengthen the Bank’s approach to AVCD for the Feed Africa Strategy.


An explicit AVCD approach, a common terminology, and a consistent set of fundamentals should be adopted within the Bank, and discussed/disseminated within the RMCs so as harmonize dialogues on VC approaches. The fundamentals and enablers proposed by the evaluation can be considered as a starting point. To complement and improve implementation of the Feed Africa strategy, guidelines and an organization-wide capacity

development program could be developed in line with the AVCD approach. There are a number of technical guidelines available for value chain analysis and development prepared by international development organizations, governments, and research institutions46. These can form a useful basis for the Bank to develop its own practice for VC analysis. This should involve all Bank departments that play a role in supporting ACVD, with a clear vision on how integration at regional and national levels will occur in the context of specific value chains.

Recommendation 2: Build AVCD analytical and implementation capabilities.

Successful interventions in AVCD require that country program and project designs are based on AVC analyses as part of their preparatory activities. This initial analysis should involve identification of the support required for the enabling environment and where interventions are required (by the Bank as well as partners). It will be important to include adequate resourcing in program and project budgets early in implementation to carry out the necessary analysis. At a minimum, this should include farming systems management requirements, technical production requirements for innovation and value addition, market assessment, and participatory stakeholder analysis. It is also important to incorporate processes and resources to allow for review of VC analyses during implementation to identify market dynamics and respond to changing contexts. The analyses need to be well understood and used by project implementers, who would require orientation and capacity development of key value chain actors.

Recommendation 3: Focus AVCD interventions on adding value and achieving sustainable impact.

Based on VC analyses conducted, interventions should consider which VC nodes and/or branches can be supported, and in what ways, to achieve greatest impact for the identified target groups. Interventions should add value to base production through technological advances in post-harvest

51Conclusions and Recommendations

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processing, reduction of wastage, improved price advantage for purchase of inputs or sales, and more efficient consolidation and distribution channels, among others. It will also be imperative to track value addition activities based on a systems approach (e.g. in line with production and marketing cycles to allow for adaptability and responsiveness in implementation). Investment in such interventions should reduce costs, increase net profit and reduce risks to achieve greatest impact for identified target groups. Such strategies should also support resilience and versatility in target groups so that AVCD interventions enhance knowledge management and achieve sustained impact.

Recommendation 4: Work with partners, especially the private sector, to strengthen strategic and operational approaches to AVCD.

The Bank should work closely with key partners to develop a coherent approach to AVCD. This will require identification of potential new partners and strengthening of approaches to partnership management in Bank AVCD interventions. Policy interventions will require strong strategic partnerships, often with other major development partners to build regional influence for change. Often specialist advice will be required to carry out analyses and achieve the required changes in specific commodities. Operational partnerships will be particularly important in ensuring that the enabling factors are in place in areas of AVCD interventions. These may be regional or national partners with necessary experience and resources.

Recommendation 5: Take affirmative actions to ensure inclusiveness.

Inclusiveness is already well-covered in policy and design documents but more is required to ensure that inclusiveness results in impact for target populations. The Bank should develop a holistic approach to inclusiveness, which reflect an in-depth understanding of the power relations, bargaining framework and social position of

vulnerable groups, and support their inclusion all along the VC. Quotas for inclusion are not enough. Participation in activities by default cannot be assumed to generate impact. The Bank should develop a holistic approach to inclusiveness looking not only at the position and roles of vulnerable populations all along the VC, but also at their capacity to access productive assets (water, capital, knowledge, land), their risk management strategies, level of literacy, capacity to be formally represented and the social norms they are confronted with in their communities and households. Affirmative action is required in AVCD interventions to ensure inclusiveness and wider environmental and social benefits. Analyzing the power relations and social constructions that exist between social groups and acting on such structural aspects of marginalization is necessary to ensure a more inclusive distribution of created wealth and prevent unequal relations from perpetuating themselves. Distribution of the value-added across the VC should be analyzed and compared to the position of vulnerable populations in the VC as a key input for developing inclusive strategies. Indeed, understanding how women and men participate in value chain activities and the way VC benefits are distributed are critical for gender inclusiveness. Field guidelines and tools on how to address inclusiveness should be developed to support operational work.

Recommendation 6: Strengthen policy dialogue to enhance a conducive AVCD environment.

A policy component should be included in interventions to assist in enforcing change and support improvements in the AVCD environment. This implies not only developing a policy dialogue with national authorities, but also integrating other VC stakeholders around AVCD. It should go well beyond production and, through a holistic approach, develop improved sectoral policies encompassing land tenure, support services, knowledge systems, capacity building, strengthening of Farmers’ Organizations (FO), coordination of actors along the VC, establishment of a framework to support


producers in meeting quality standards, or support to establishing fair conditions for contract farming to develop. A holistic approach to the strengthening of an AVCD environment is all the more desirable that, though some aspects are specific to a given commodity (norms and standards, fiscal policy), others such as FO strengthening are likely to have knock on effects on the environment of other agricultural commodities. National level work and

more localized interventions should be envisaged complementarily. Working at a local level most probably helps dealing with production, processing and local marketing issues whereas working at a national level creates better conditions for working on creating an enabling environment to AVCD in terms of policy issues as well as on institutional issues linked to global VC coordination and market regulation.

Annexes


Annex 1 — Evaluation Approach and Methodology

This annex describes the objectives and key questions for the evaluation, a theory of change for the Bank’s interventions in AVCD. It outlines in detail the methodology of the evaluation and the identified limitations.

The objectives of the evaluation of Bank support to agricultural value chain development are:

1. Assess the relevance, inclusiveness, effectiveness, impact and sustainability of the Bank’s support for value chain development;

2. Provide lessons and experience for the design and implementation of agricultural value chain interventions associated with the Feed Africa Strategy.

Three key questions have been identified for the evaluation to address:

1. To what extent have Bank agricultural projects been relevant in their focus on value chain development?

2. To what extent have value chain development interventions been effective in delivering sustainable development results?

3. To what extent have value chain development interventions been inclusive (pro-poor, women and youth) and supportive of green growth?

The evaluation was designed as a formative (learning) evaluation which generates lessons that can be applied to the design of future interventions. The evaluation combined a ‘theory-based’47 approach and a ‘realist’ approach.48 The theory-based aspects allow the evaluation to test and explore the theoretical pathways by which results are achieved. The realist aspects test the extent to which Bank's support for AVCD is applied in different context and assess those results in relation to value chain theory. This was intended to ensure that the Bank’s approach to AVCD is aligned with the best available current knowledge and evidence. A formative evaluation also provides a basis to track progress in implementation by providing a basis for related evaluative activities e.g. future project and country evaluation. This evaluation and subsequent evaluations can be synthesized demonstrate whether, and how, institutional learning is occurring over time; contributing to knowledge management and good practice. Nonetheless, it was important for the evaluation to go beyond the academic theory of value chain development towards pragmatic identification of successes of and constraints to value chain development, to allow the Bank to build their new approach on the lessons from previous AVCD interventions. A series of case studies provided a way to test AVCD theory in different situations.

Theory of Change

A generic theory of change (ToC) was developed to articulate the pathways by which the Bank support to AVCD is expected to achieve the desired outputs, outcomes, and impacts to ultimately contribute to the vision and objectives of the ‘Feed Africa’ Strategy. The resulting ToC is illustrated in Figure A.1 and its components are described below.

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Inputs – The sectoral inputs in the ToC include those activities already provided by the Bank in its agriculture development interventions. It is expected that each intervention would include some or all of these activities as appropriate.

Interventions – This comprises programs, projects, and other forms of technical support through which the Bank delivers its inputs to support agriculture VCD. Interventions target priority crops that have already been identified as part of the Feed Africa Strategy. These are categorized as self-sufficiency value chains which relate mainly to achieving food security, nutritional needs value chains related to fulfilling nutritional demands of the population and export value chains which relate to specific GVCs.

Key fundamentals and enabling environment – The enabling environment describes the key characteristics conducive to achieving successful AVCD. Seven key enabling factors are already identified in the Feed Africa Strategy and were found to be applicable to AVCD. During the evaluation the seven enablers were tested using theory and practice led to: five that are critical for all Bank value chain interventions (termed key “fundamentals”) and five that need to present in relation to the needs of the specific value chain to enable commercialization (termed “enablers”). These fundamentals and enablers are shown as the key assumptions to achieve outputs and outcomes in the ToC. The development of the distinction between fundamentals and enablers during the evaluation and how they relate to Feed Africa enablers is depicted below in Figure A.2.

Fundamentals – All Bank AVCD interventions must (i) be based upon careful context-specific value chain analysis including identification of risks and assumptions to ensure value-added along the VC; (ii) strive for inclusiveness for poor farmers, women, youth and other vulnerable groups in terms of participation and benefits achieved from AVCD; (iii) be flexible and responsive to changing contexts, situations, actors or market demand in the targeted VCs; (iv) focus primarily on profitability and efficiency of the value chain as a whole, rather than focus mainly on increasing production volumes; and (v) consider the desired sustainability of impact in design and apply strategies during implementation to ensure long term impact of investments.

Enabling factors – The enabling factors for successful AVCD that need to be strengthened as necessary based on the value chain analysis are (i) availability of appropriate Infrastructure and Information Communication Technology (ICT); (ii) a more conducive policy and regulatory environment pertaining to the targeted VC; (iii) availability of appropriate business support services to strengthen the skills of VC actors; (iv) access to finance for VC actors to make required investments required to achieve increased profitability; and (v) working relationships among VC actors and particularly with the private sector.

Outputs – These are “the products, capital goods and services which result from a development intervention. Specific outputs depend on the intervention however for AVCD interventions the outputs produced must be in line with market demand.

Outcomes – These are “the likely or achieved short-term and medium-term effects of an intervention’s outputs. The outcomes specified in the theory of change are the short to medium term results expected from interventions.

Impacts – These are the longer term effects of the interventions. Those specified in the theory of change are the positive, intended long-term impacts of AVCD interventions. It is through achievement of these impacts that the interventions are expected to contribute to achieving Feed Africa’s vision: “Transformation of African agriculture into a competitive and inclusive agribusiness sector that creates wealth, improves lives, and secures the environment.”49


Bank inputs (Sectoral)

Interventions – Support to Feed Africa priority commodities

Outputs (Where relevant and in line with commodity

market demand)

Outcomes (Depending on

commodity & stated objectives)

Impacts

Infrastructure development

Environment and natural resource

management

Rural finance

Agriculture research and extension

Governance and policy advice

Technical assistance and knowledge work

Reduced rural poverty

Increased food security

Employment generation

Sustained benefits to target groups

Transitioning to green growth and resilience

to climate change

Macro-economic benefits

Identified value chain gaps and opportunities

Increased productivity & value addition of specific

products

Improved quality of production in line

with market demand

Innovation and/or adaptation in technology & ICT

Improved access to market & efficient

supply chain operations

Improved capacity of value chain

actors (knowledge, skills, practices) to

respond to changing market demands

Self-sufficiency value chains

(Rice, wheat, millet, sorghum, sugar,

potatoes)

Export value chains

(cocoa, coffee, cashew nut,

horticulture, cotton)

AVCD fundamentals

1. Analysis of value chains

2. Profitability with value addition

3. Responsiveness to market

4. Inclusiveness5. Sustained impact

AVCD enablers

1. Availability of appropriate infrastructure and technology

2. Conducive policy & regulatory environment3. Availability of appropriate business support 4. Access to finance5. Private sector participation & linkages among

VC actors

Figure A.1: Generic Theory of Change for Bank support to agricultural value chains development

Increased profitability of value

chain businesses

Increased responsiveness of value chain actors to changing market

demands

Empowerment of women and youth & other vulnerable

groups

At the intervention level:

Increased environmental

sustainability and response to climate

change

Equitable distribution of

benefits

Enhanced competitiveness in target markets for

agri-products

Improved, cooperative & integrated

environment for agribusiness

At the macro level:Nutritional needs value chains

(Cassava, beef, fish, dairy, maize, soy,

poultry)

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Figure A.2: Relations between enablers in the Feed Africa Strategy and the 5 fundamentals and 5 enablers used in the evaluation

The synthesis and analysis in the evaluation led to refinement of and additions to the Feed Africa enablers. This resulted in 10 enablers that were classified into 5 key fundamentals for all AVCD interventions and 5 enablers to be supported depending on the context.

1 Increase productivity

1 Value chains analysis

3 Responsiveness to market

5 Sustained impact

2 Inclusiveness

1 Private sector participation & linkages among VC actors

2 Conducive policy & regulatory environment

3 Availability of appropriate infrastructure & ICT

5 Access to finance

4 Availability of appropriate business support

4 Profitability with value addition

2 Realize the value of increased production

3 Increase investment into enabling hard & soft infrastructure

4 Catalyze flows of increased agricultural finance

5 Create an improved agribusiness environment

6 Increased inclusivity, sustainability, and nutrition

7 Coordination of actors as a partnership to drive transformation

Feed Africa Strategy enablers

AVCD Fundamentals(Consistently applied

by the Bank in all AVCD interventions)

Enablers for AVCD(to be supported by the

Bank, with partners)

Lines of evidenceAll literature reviewed highlights importance of sound and detailed VC analysis. All case studies identified that performance in relevance, effectiveness and sustainability has been hindered by insufficient VC analysis. The case study synthesis concludes that analysis is essential for all VC interventions and should also support adaptation during implementation.

Inclusiveness is core for the Bank, throughout Feed Africa and the literature reviewed. The portfolio review and all case studies found that inclusiveness was not sufficiently addressed in Bank interventions. Literature highlighted that inclusion is not automatic and needs specific focus for any VCD interventions so has been classified as a principle to be included more strongly and specifically in all interventions.

The literature and case studies show that VCs are constantly changing. Case studies found that interventions did not generally respond to changes that occurred e.g. in demand for products or market prices. This is included as a principle because mechanisms need to be deliberately included in design to allow flexibility in implementation to respond to market and contextual changes.

Case studies found that AVCD interventions to date focus heavily on increase in commodity production; without sufficiently considering efficiency and net financial gain, particularly to the poor. Literature shows that production without profit does not create viable VCs. The principle of profitability combines the Feed Africa enablers of productivity and value of production to make sure that both are achieved for all VC interventions.

Literature shows the complexity of sustainability for VC interventions. Markets and actors change so VCs themselves may become obsolete. Case studies found that mechanisms for maintaining infrastructure and strengthening farmer’s organisations can be improved but that a focus on resilience for target populations to be able to respond to market triggers is important. Consequently, deliberate and ongoing efforts are required to ensure that initial gains through VCD interventions are sustained.

Literature confirms the importance of strengthening VC linkages and coordination of actors as identified in Feed Africa. Portfolio review found that this area is not yet supported in most interventions and that different forms of partnerships are required. Case studies confirm that there were missed opportunities, particularly to engage with private sector and to initiate/strengthen linkages that will continue without project support.

Literature and case studies both confirmed the importance of an enabling policy and regulatory environment. However, this is larger than agribusiness as it also covers other areas of the governance of VC operations such as health and hygiene or product quality regulations and enforcement. This requires partnerships with governance bodies.

The case studies and portfolio review found that the Bank’s interventions strongly support infrastructure and are generally effective. The literature supports that both hard infrastructure and soft of information communication technology (ICT) are important enablers to achieving AVCD outcomes. This can be provided directly through Bank support or in partnership with other agencies.

An enabler relating to appropriate business support services was added as this was important throughout the literature reviewed to build VC capacity. This is particularly important as an enabler through Bank support or in partnership to support poor farmers as a shift is required from subsistence to market-oriented production and as value addition becomes more differentiated.

Literature consistently confirms lack of access to finance as a hindrance to success of AVCD. Case studies found that where finance was available it contributed to positive outcomes. Synthesis finds that access to finance across the VC actors is therefore an important enabler that generally requires linkage support to existing financial partners.

■ Directly relates to Feed Africa Enablers

■ Enabler added during AVCD evaluation

■ Fundamentals added during AVCD evaluation


Methodological Approach

IDEV prepared an approach paper for the evaluation (July 2016) which outlined the evaluation’s objectives and proposed the four phase methodological approach. Two preparation phases: (I) Literature Review; (II) Policy and Strategy Review informed the development of the more detailed evaluation methodology for Phases III and IV, respectively country case studies and this final synthesis phase. Interim outputs associated with each phase have been prepared leading up to this synthesis phase.

Phase I – Literature and portfolio review

This first phase comprised desktop literature and portfolio reviews. The literature review presented the features and status of agricultural value chains in Africa and globally, the successes, potential benefits, risks and constraints of AVCD. In particular, it synthesized key findings and lessons learned from previous evaluations conducted by the Bank and other development partners, as well as from academic literature. The portfolio review described the evolution of Bank support to AVCD based on approved project designs, and proposed a draft selection of case study countries for Phase III.

Phase II – Policy and strategy review

This phase comprised a review of the Bank’s policies and strategies from the decade 2005–2017 relating to agriculture as well as a sample of country strategy papers (CSPs). This aimed to establish the strategic context and evolution of the focus on VCD within the Bank. The review also analyzed key Africa-wide agriculture and development strategies, and strategies of other multilateral development partners in supporting AVCD, to understand the level of alignment with the Bank’s strategic directions. Key informant interviews were also conducted in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire in October 2016 with Bank staff currently working at the strategic level in the agriculture, rural development and private sector departments. These interviews deepened understanding of the evolving strategic context and provided more up to date information and inputs to case study country selection.

Phase III – Country case studies

The country case studies provided opportunity to investigate how different forms of investments and designs by the Bank and partners can contribute towards positive outcomes in AVCD. The case studies aimed to highlight good practices, challenges and lessons learned to inform future Bank investments. Evaluation sub-questions were developed to guide the case studies. The evaluation used interview spreadsheets for traceability and cross-verification of information.

The country case study phase of this evaluation encompassed VC related agriculture development interventions implemented by the Bank during the period from 2006–2016. They covered different agro-ecological, socio-economic and market contexts including completed and ongoing interventions in nine selected countries: Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Morocco, Mozambique, Zambia, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda.

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The case study countries were selected based on:

a. Support to a priority value chain as identified in the Feed Africa Strategy;b. Regional representativeness (at least one country from each of the five Bank regions); and c. Balance with respect to range of different types of value chain and target commodities.

The case studies focus on interventions (at least one per country) which support or have supported a Feed Africa commodity VC (Figure 1).

Each case study included field missions of 9–10 days in which focus group discussions (FGD) and meetings were held with (i) producers (men and women), (ii) processors, (iii) traders (retailers, wholesalers, import or export companies both in the capital and in the project area), (iv) Government authorities concerned with the commodity (at a national and a local level), (v) the Bank Country Team, (vi) the project team, (vii) Other Bank project teams (when relevant) and (viii) Development Partners.

The data collection was guided by a standardized coding sheet based on the evaluation matrix. Findings were detailed in nine individual case study reports and synthesis report. The interventions considered are summarized in Table A.1 below.

Phase IV – Evaluation synthesis

The final evaluation synthesis phase brings together all the analysis undertaken in the first three phases and associated outputs, to prepare the final technical report and a summary report for the evaluation. It draws together the findings from literature, from past and present Bank portfolio and operations. It makes comment on the Bank’s policies and key strategic directions in relation to AVCD and formulates overall conclusions and recommendations.

Table A.1: List of interventions considered in country case studies

Country ProjectsDRC PADIR – Rural infrastructure development support project

Côte d'Ivoire SUCDEN – Agricultural commodities programme

PAIA-ID – Agricultural infrastructure support project in Indénié - Djuablin Region

Kenya KOSFIP – Kimiraoluch smallholder farm improvement project

SHDP – Small scale horticulture development project

Liberia SAPEC – Smallholder agricultural productivity enhancement and commercialization project

Morocco PA-PNEEI – National irrigation water conservation programme support project

PA-PMV – Green Morocco plan support programme

Mozambique BLICRP – Baixa and Limpopo irrigation and climate resilience project

Rwanda LISP – Rwanda livestock infrastructure support programme

PADEBL – Dairy Cattle Development Support Project

Uganda LEAF II – Lakes Edward & Albert integrated fisheries & water resources

Zambia CIDP – Cashew infrastructure development project


Annex 2 — Evaluation Matrix

Key evaluation questions with their sub-questions Indicator Source of data Methodology

1. Relevance: To what extent is the Bank’s support in the agriculture sector focused on value chain development?

Whole of Africa and regional level:

❙ What is the Bank’s overall approach to agricultural value chain development in terms of policy and strategy? How has it evolved over time?

❙ How far is country ownership reflected in designing the overarching policies and strategies? ❙ Does the Bank’s strategic approach provide a framework for inclusiveness of vulnerable groups (women, youth and poor)? ❙ How far does the Bank’s assistance for AVCD build on existing or new knowledge work? ❙ Are there differences between the Bank’s approach and other development partners? ❙ Has appropriate support/resource allocation been provided for policy and institutional reforms to enable/promote agribusiness and value chain development?

❙ Is Bank support promoting the long-term engagement of the private sector into the agribusiness /value chain?

❙ Objectives and operational focus of the Bank’s strategies and policies. ❙ Evidence of consultation with member countries in development of recent strategies.

❙ Alignment with other strategic documents for development in Africa. ❙ Reference to key literature related to AVCD practice in development of policies and strategies.

❙ Adequate consideration of vulnerable groups in policy and strategy documents.

❙ Actual/planned shift in resource allocation towards AVCD support.

❙ Bank Strategic documents (2005–2016) – see Policy and Strategy review)

❙ Bank’s agriculture sector portfolio and resource allocation

❙ Country strategy papers ❙ Policy and strategy documents of development partners

❙ Academic and practice literature related to AVCD

❙ Policy and strategy review

❙ Portfolio review ❙ Literature review ❙ Key Stakeholders’ interviews at HQ

❙ Internal portfolio review

Country level:

❙ Do country strategies reflect the Bank’s approach to AVCD? ❙ Does the country strategy (past, present, future – for the period of the CSP) align with the Bank’s approach to AVCD? ❙ Are the types of approaches and instruments used at the country level appropriate in relation to the CSP and other AVCD initiatives at country level?

❙ Is appropriate training/capability building available? Are there capacity gaps? Is relevant training/capacity building available? ❙ Does the Bank’s country program support innovations in AVCD? ❙ What is the pattern of resource allocation/other support in the agriculture sector which supports value chain development? ❙ Have new, improved partnerships and collaboration been developed by the Bank with other donors and in-country partners in relation to strengthening AVCD?

❙ Country Strategy Papers make reference to AVCD literature and higher level Bank strategies.

❙ Number, design and resource allocation of projects designed to support AVCD. ❙ Country programs/partners provide adequate resources/support to ensure that comprehensive AVCD analysis has occurred and a suitable enabling environment is available (all 8 key factors in ToC are evident and appropriate to requirements).

❙ Extent and nature of the innovations supported in production, post productions, management, financing etc.

❙ Partnerships results in strengthening policy and regulatory environment. ❙ Availability of appropriate AVCD finance. ❙ Examples of effective coordination and partnerships related to national and specific AVCD initiatives.

❙ Country level strategic documents (e.g. CSPs) and process for selection of AVCD initiatives.

❙ Country portfolio documents and studies.

❙ Portfolio and project progress reports. Records of key informant interviews with Bank, development partners, implementers and value chain actors.

Country case studies:

❙ Review of country context

❙ Interviews with country stakeholders (Bank, Govt., implementing partners and project participants including representatives from all VC actors).

2. Are the projects with value chain intervention effective and sustainable in delivering development results?

Effectiveness:

❙ Have systematic gaps and opportunities in relation to AVCD been effectively identified and analysed at the country level? ❙ Have comprehensive value chain analyses been carried out for specific commodities? (In line with Feed Africa commodities or country-specific?)

❙ Has an AVCD stakeholder map and engagement strategy been developed for AVCD initiatives in general and for specific value chains? ❙ Is there evidence of Bank-supported AVCD-related investments in the country generating: • Increased production in line with targets?• Improved quality of production in line with market demand?• Smoother/shorter supply chain operations (facilities, processing facilities, distribution)?• More value adding to farm production, processing or distribution?• Access for producers to new or higher value markets?

❙ Is innovation and/or adaptation in technology evident (e.g. seeds, farming practices, processing, distribution, marketing)?

❙ Analysis reports/studies of agriculture sector and commercial development opportunities

❙ Justification for selection of commodities for AVCD investments is clearly documented/aligned/researched with analyses, feasibility studies and business plans prior to investment

❙ Selected value chain actors clearly identified and effective coordination/communication mechanism in place

❙ Evidence of private sector engagement in Bank support for AVCD ❙ Comparative data (before/after, with without) for specific AVCD initiatives e.g. ❙ Farmer access to land, water, inputs, credit. ❙ Crop production/yield data ❙ Sales/profit margin data ❙ Infrastructure improvements (road, storage, irrigation, processing, energy, ICT etc.) and attribution of AVCD benefits to infrastructure installation and function.

❙ Evidence of enhanced competitiveness in target markets or value chains. ❙ Evidence of improved cooperation actors for agricultural trade of products. ❙ Improved environment (reduced barriers, availability of agribusiness services, improved infrastructure within value chains and for other commercial agriculture initiatives).

❙ Bank reports, Ministry of Agriculture, National statistical offices. Development partners’ reports

❙ Project design reports ❙ Records of meetings with key stakeholders/ development partners

❙ Various existing studies( by government or DPs)

❙ Project reports, supervision reports, PCRs.

❙ Data sourced from key informants

❙ Available studies, relevant reports of development partners

❙ Portfolio review ❙ Literature Review ❙ Country case studies ❙ Stakeholders interviews ❙ Case study field visits and interviews with project implementers and VC actors.

❙ Key informant interviews e.g. local government, technical specialists.

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1. Relevance: To what extent is the Bank’s support in the agriculture sector focused on value chain development?

Whole of Africa and regional level:

❙ What is the Bank’s overall approach to agricultural value chain development in terms of policy and strategy? How has it evolved over time?

❙ How far is country ownership reflected in designing the overarching policies and strategies? ❙ Does the Bank’s strategic approach provide a framework for inclusiveness of vulnerable groups (women, youth and poor)? ❙ How far does the Bank’s assistance for AVCD build on existing or new knowledge work? ❙ Are there differences between the Bank’s approach and other development partners? ❙ Has appropriate support/resource allocation been provided for policy and institutional reforms to enable/promote agribusiness and value chain development?

❙ Is Bank support promoting the long-term engagement of the private sector into the agribusiness /value chain?

❙ Objectives and operational focus of the Bank’s strategies and policies. ❙ Evidence of consultation with member countries in development of recent strategies.

❙ Alignment with other strategic documents for development in Africa. ❙ Reference to key literature related to AVCD practice in development of policies and strategies.

❙ Adequate consideration of vulnerable groups in policy and strategy documents.

❙ Actual/planned shift in resource allocation towards AVCD support.

❙ Bank Strategic documents (2005–2016) – see Policy and Strategy review)

❙ Bank’s agriculture sector portfolio and resource allocation

❙ Country strategy papers ❙ Policy and strategy documents of development partners

❙ Academic and practice literature related to AVCD


❙ Portfolio review ❙ Literature review ❙ Key Stakeholders’ interviews at HQ

❙ Internal portfolio review

Country level:

❙ Do country strategies reflect the Bank’s approach to AVCD? ❙ Does the country strategy (past, present, future – for the period of the CSP) align with the Bank’s approach to AVCD? ❙ Are the types of approaches and instruments used at the country level appropriate in relation to the CSP and other AVCD initiatives at country level?

❙ Is appropriate training/capability building available? Are there capacity gaps? Is relevant training/capacity building available? ❙ Does the Bank’s country program support innovations in AVCD? ❙ What is the pattern of resource allocation/other support in the agriculture sector which supports value chain development? ❙ Have new, improved partnerships and collaboration been developed by the Bank with other donors and in-country partners in relation to strengthening AVCD?

❙ Country Strategy Papers make reference to AVCD literature and higher level Bank strategies.

❙ Number, design and resource allocation of projects designed to support AVCD. ❙ Country programs/partners provide adequate resources/support to ensure that comprehensive AVCD analysis has occurred and a suitable enabling environment is available (all 8 key factors in ToC are evident and appropriate to requirements).

❙ Extent and nature of the innovations supported in production, post productions, management, financing etc.

❙ Partnerships results in strengthening policy and regulatory environment. ❙ Availability of appropriate AVCD finance. ❙ Examples of effective coordination and partnerships related to national and specific AVCD initiatives.

❙ Country level strategic documents (e.g. CSPs) and process for selection of AVCD initiatives.

❙ Country portfolio documents and studies.

❙ Portfolio and project progress reports. Records of key informant interviews with Bank, development partners, implementers and value chain actors.

Country case studies:

❙ Review of country context

❙ Interviews with country stakeholders (Bank, Govt., implementing partners and project participants including representatives from all VC actors).

2. Are the projects with value chain intervention effective and sustainable in delivering development results?

Effectiveness:

❙ Have systematic gaps and opportunities in relation to AVCD been effectively identified and analysed at the country level? ❙ Have comprehensive value chain analyses been carried out for specific commodities? (In line with Feed Africa commodities or country-specific?)

❙ Has an AVCD stakeholder map and engagement strategy been developed for AVCD initiatives in general and for specific value chains? ❙ Is there evidence of Bank-supported AVCD-related investments in the country generating: • Increased production in line with targets?• Improved quality of production in line with market demand?• Smoother/shorter supply chain operations (facilities, processing facilities, distribution)?• More value adding to farm production, processing or distribution?• Access for producers to new or higher value markets?

❙ Is innovation and/or adaptation in technology evident (e.g. seeds, farming practices, processing, distribution, marketing)?

❙ Analysis reports/studies of agriculture sector and commercial development opportunities

❙ Justification for selection of commodities for AVCD investments is clearly documented/aligned/researched with analyses, feasibility studies and business plans prior to investment

❙ Selected value chain actors clearly identified and effective coordination/communication mechanism in place

❙ Evidence of private sector engagement in Bank support for AVCD ❙ Comparative data (before/after, with without) for specific AVCD initiatives e.g. ❙ Farmer access to land, water, inputs, credit. ❙ Crop production/yield data ❙ Sales/profit margin data ❙ Infrastructure improvements (road, storage, irrigation, processing, energy, ICT etc.) and attribution of AVCD benefits to infrastructure installation and function.

❙ Evidence of enhanced competitiveness in target markets or value chains. ❙ Evidence of improved cooperation actors for agricultural trade of products. ❙ Improved environment (reduced barriers, availability of agribusiness services, improved infrastructure within value chains and for other commercial agriculture initiatives).


❙ Project design reports ❙ Records of meetings with key stakeholders/ development partners

❙ Various existing studies( by government or DPs)

❙ Project reports, supervision reports, PCRs.

❙ Data sourced from key informants

❙ Available studies, relevant reports of development partners

❙ Portfolio review ❙ Literature Review ❙ Country case studies ❙ Stakeholders interviews ❙ Case study field visits and interviews with project implementers and VC actors.

❙ Key informant interviews e.g. local government, technical specialists.



Sustainable results:

❙ Have seasonality/market demand variations/ other risk factors been adequately addressed in design and implementation? ❙ Have Bank interventions contributed to increase in farm household income? (extent of contribution, likelihood of sustainability) ❙ Are producers and other targeted value chain actors able to maintain the benefits achieved from value chain interventions after they are completed?

❙ To what extent has farmers’ use of improved technologies/processes (such as irrigation, fertilizer, seed, and farm tool) increased? ❙ Has the private sector been able to leverage the support provided by the public sector? ❙ Have there been efforts made to ensure that benefits to smallholders are sustained? ❙ Is there an improved capacity of value chain actors (knowledge, skills, practices) to respond to VC requirements?

❙ Comprehensive and realistic risk assessments incorporated in value chain analysis and business plans. Climate change adaptation and mitigation measures.

❙ Number of Bank operations informed through Economic and Sector Works (ESWs).

❙ Reduced post-harvest losses ❙ Increased environmental sustainability and resilience to climate change for value chain.

❙ Improved inputs; reduced waste and loss. ❙ Evidence of adoption and replication of innovations and practices

❙ Stakeholder interviews ❙ Project reports, supervision reports, PCRs


❙ Country case studies

3. Has the Bank's support to agricultural value chains been inclusive in terms of the participation of the poor, women and youth in the sector?

Strategic level:

❙ Has the Bank targeted growth potential for both employment and income of poor, women and youth? ❙ Are the poor and marginal groups sufficiently included opportunities for value addition? ❙ In which type of chains and competitive niches can the poor, women and youth most effectively compete? ❙ What are the challenges to link smallholder farmers, women and youth into global value chains? ❙ How can the Bank help poor farmers and vulnerable groups to compete in commercially viable market niches?

❙ Inclusiveness of people experiencing poverty, women, and youth in the design of the strategies and policies, and projects

❙ Access to and appropriateness of support services (i.e., technical, credit, extension, marketing) networks) provided in AfDB projects for poor, women and youth

❙ Access to inputs and assets (e.g. land, finance, fertilisers, energy etc.) improved for poor, women and youth participants

❙ Improved empowerment of women and youth in specific agricultural value chains.

❙ Inclusiveness (with benefit) of environment, women, youth, minorities.

❙ Stakeholder interviews ❙ Strategic and project documentation/data

❙ Literature from other development partners, academia and industry


❙ Portfolio review ❙ Literature review ❙ Country case studies

Country/intervention level:

❙ What is the location and position of poor, women, youth in the value chain (who does what, who owns what, and who controls what, who earns what, how do actors/groups interact, power relations etc.)

❙ Have interventions been designed to reflect knowledge of the target groups’ location and position in the value chain? ❙ Were the interventions designed to ensure sufficient level of participation by poor, women and marginal groups for sustained benefits from agribusiness/value chain development?

❙ Mechanisms and support systems to ensure that these groups are incorporated where there are most value added benefit.

❙ Access to inputs (e.g. land, finance, fertilisers, energy etc.) improved for poor, women and youth participants

❙ Women participation in farmers groups (including in leadership roles) ❙ Improved empowerment of women and youth in specific agricultural value chains.

❙ Inclusiveness (with benefit) of environment, women, youth, minorities. ❙ Benefits (e.g. improved production, yields, income) are distributed equitably among target participants including those experiencing poverty, women and youth.



❙ Country case studies ❙ Portfolio Review

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Sustainable results:

❙ Have seasonality/market demand variations/ other risk factors been adequately addressed in design and implementation? ❙ Have Bank interventions contributed to increase in farm household income? (extent of contribution, likelihood of sustainability) ❙ Are producers and other targeted value chain actors able to maintain the benefits achieved from value chain interventions after they are completed?

❙ To what extent has farmers’ use of improved technologies/processes (such as irrigation, fertilizer, seed, and farm tool) increased? ❙ Has the private sector been able to leverage the support provided by the public sector? ❙ Have there been efforts made to ensure that benefits to smallholders are sustained? ❙ Is there an improved capacity of value chain actors (knowledge, skills, practices) to respond to VC requirements?

❙ Comprehensive and realistic risk assessments incorporated in value chain analysis and business plans. Climate change adaptation and mitigation measures.

❙ Number of Bank operations informed through Economic and Sector Works (ESWs).

❙ Reduced post-harvest losses ❙ Increased environmental sustainability and resilience to climate change for value chain.

❙ Improved inputs; reduced waste and loss. ❙ Evidence of adoption and replication of innovations and practices

❙ Stakeholder interviews ❙ Project reports, supervision reports, PCRs


❙ Country case studies

3. Has the Bank's support to agricultural value chains been inclusive in terms of the participation of the poor, women and youth in the sector?

Strategic level:

❙ Has the Bank targeted growth potential for both employment and income of poor, women and youth? ❙ Are the poor and marginal groups sufficiently included opportunities for value addition? ❙ In which type of chains and competitive niches can the poor, women and youth most effectively compete? ❙ What are the challenges to link smallholder farmers, women and youth into global value chains? ❙ How can the Bank help poor farmers and vulnerable groups to compete in commercially viable market niches?

❙ Inclusiveness of people experiencing poverty, women, and youth in the design of the strategies and policies, and projects

❙ Access to and appropriateness of support services (i.e., technical, credit, extension, marketing) networks) provided in AfDB projects for poor, women and youth

❙ Access to inputs and assets (e.g. land, finance, fertilisers, energy etc.) improved for poor, women and youth participants

❙ Improved empowerment of women and youth in specific agricultural value chains.

❙ Inclusiveness (with benefit) of environment, women, youth, minorities.




❙ Portfolio review ❙ Literature review ❙ Country case studies

Country/intervention level:

❙ What is the location and position of poor, women, youth in the value chain (who does what, who owns what, and who controls what, who earns what, how do actors/groups interact, power relations etc.)

❙ Have interventions been designed to reflect knowledge of the target groups’ location and position in the value chain? ❙ Were the interventions designed to ensure sufficient level of participation by poor, women and marginal groups for sustained benefits from agribusiness/value chain development?

❙ Mechanisms and support systems to ensure that these groups are incorporated where there are most value added benefit.

❙ Access to inputs (e.g. land, finance, fertilisers, energy etc.) improved for poor, women and youth participants

❙ Women participation in farmers groups (including in leadership roles) ❙ Improved empowerment of women and youth in specific agricultural value chains.

❙ Inclusiveness (with benefit) of environment, women, youth, minorities. ❙ Benefits (e.g. improved production, yields, income) are distributed equitably among target participants including those experiencing poverty, women and youth.



❙ Country case studies ❙ Portfolio Review


Annex 3 — Analysis of Inclusiveness in Case Studies

Zambia Rwanda DR Congo Uganda Kenya Côte d’Ivoire Liberia Morocco Mozambique

Commodity Cashew Dairy Meat Fish Tomato Cocoa Cassava Wheat Rice

AVCD intervention Production, some potential for processing, marketing

Production (focus)collection, marketing

Production, collection, processing

Production, collection Production, processing, marketing

Production (focus) Production, marketing Production, marketing Production, processing

Involvement of women, youth & vulnerable groups in the VC

Women provide most of the labor force in the cashew VC, particularly in processing, but have limited access to land and productive assets.

Women are involved in animal feeding, milk processing & sales, cleaning of milk cans & as traders. Young men are often active as middle men. People from lower economic and social classes have no access to dairy farming, since cows are expensive.

Women are involved in wholesale & retail trade. Youth are involved in breeding & transport. However, the beef VC is mainly in the hands of large producers – opportunities for inclusiveness of small farmers & vulnerable groups are limited.

Women are involved in all downstream activities (drying, packing, marketing), men in fishing. Youth are involved in daily wage employment all through the VC. Lakes are open access so fishing also forms an economic safety net for vulnerable populations.

Women generally take the lead in growing vegetables and focus on crops for household consumption, selling the surplus. Most tomato traders in markets are young people.

Women and youth represent about half of the work force on cocoa farms, they contribute to harvesting and picking pods from cocoa plantations. While men break cocoa beans, women proceed to their extraction and ensure the transport to the fermentation tanks.

Cassava is produced by all types of farmers including the poorest. Women are present at all stages of the cassava value chain, form the majority of cassava farmers & play important roles in processing and marketing.

Women make up 40% to 50% of the workforce for cereal and legume farming (ZRIRA, 2006), which employs almost 45% of rural women. More generally, agriculture is the main economic activity of rural women, and employs more than 90% of working women (HCP, 2013).

Women lead all agro-processing and marketing activities, take part in production, & are specifically involved in seed selection

Attention within the planning process and implementation of interventions

The necessary level of analysis to effectively target vulnerable populations has not been undertaken for the cashew VC.

Gender issues have been considered mainly through quotas (50% women training participants; 30% women to benefit from loans, 40% youth quota for loans.

Gender related issues are better addressed than those related to youth and poor because women play a key role in the dairy VC.

Although Inclusiveness of women is an explicit objective, other vulnerable groups are not clearly involved. Specific actions for young people are integrated into the Bank’s interventions, but mainly from a social perspective rather than an AVCD one.

Though gender balance got a lot of attention, the youth was not considered in the planning process. Women were assigned quotas of beneficiaries, but it is unclear in which way project action was adapted to suit the more vulnerable.

Despite the opportunities offered by the cocoa sector to women, youth and vulnerable populations, notably in the production and first processing stages of the VC, AfDB interventions in the cocoa value chain -though they work with smallholders- do not focus on vulnerable groups.

Women have been assigned quotas in terms of benefiting from the project. However the levels of the quotas remain low given the importance of women in cassava production, transformation and marketing.

Neither intervention is characterized by a strong consideration of inclusiveness of vulnerable populations. Indeed, they tend to be oriented towards larger farms in view of creating commercial producers.

The project favors large industrial processing units rather than smaller ones closer & better adapted to the needs of smallholders. No attention has been given to supporting women's groups or smallholder associations although it helps them access land, inputs & credit, by opening a bank.

Evidence of benefit While participation is addressed via quotas it is not clear how this will translate to ensure benefits.

Most of the added value created may end up concentrated in the hands of large companies.

Increased access reliable water supply and rural feeder roads have contributed to: (i) Reduced trekking distance/time for women to collect water; (ii) Improved domestic gender/familial relations as a result of time saved; (iii) Increased women’s productivity & income particularly in the informal sector & SMEs.

Uncertain - most of the added value created may end up concentrated in the hands of large companies.

Though added value within the fish value chain will most probably increase significantly, how well it will be distributed across value chain actors is uncertain.

Uncertain – most of the added value created may end up concentrated in the hands of large companies.

The project has supported pre-financing producers to allow investing in quality inputs (seeds, chemicals, and fertilizers) and improve productivity but the system does not fully benefit vulnerable populations due to their limited involvement within the cooperatives through which it functions.

Quotas have ensured vulnerable people receive training and cassava cuttings, but it appears that benefits do not extend much further. Though added value within the cassava value chain will most probably increase, how well it will be distributed among value chain actors is still uncertain.

Inclusiveness was not a priority in PAPMV and PNEEI. In PNEEI, interventions were not focused on the most vulnerable populations.


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Zambia Rwanda DR Congo Uganda Kenya Côte d’Ivoire Liberia Morocco Mozambique

Commodity Cashew Dairy Meat Fish Tomato Cocoa Cassava Wheat Rice

AVCD intervention Production, some potential for processing, marketing

Production (focus)collection, marketing

Production, collection, processing

Production, collection Production, processing, marketing

Production (focus) Production, marketing Production, marketing Production, processing

Involvement of women, youth & vulnerable groups in the VC

Women provide most of the labor force in the cashew VC, particularly in processing, but have limited access to land and productive assets.

Women are involved in animal feeding, milk processing & sales, cleaning of milk cans & as traders. Young men are often active as middle men. People from lower economic and social classes have no access to dairy farming, since cows are expensive.

Women are involved in wholesale & retail trade. Youth are involved in breeding & transport. However, the beef VC is mainly in the hands of large producers – opportunities for inclusiveness of small farmers & vulnerable groups are limited.

Women are involved in all downstream activities (drying, packing, marketing), men in fishing. Youth are involved in daily wage employment all through the VC. Lakes are open access so fishing also forms an economic safety net for vulnerable populations.

Women generally take the lead in growing vegetables and focus on crops for household consumption, selling the surplus. Most tomato traders in markets are young people.

Women and youth represent about half of the work force on cocoa farms, they contribute to harvesting and picking pods from cocoa plantations. While men break cocoa beans, women proceed to their extraction and ensure the transport to the fermentation tanks.

Cassava is produced by all types of farmers including the poorest. Women are present at all stages of the cassava value chain, form the majority of cassava farmers & play important roles in processing and marketing.

Women make up 40% to 50% of the workforce for cereal and legume farming (ZRIRA, 2006), which employs almost 45% of rural women. More generally, agriculture is the main economic activity of rural women, and employs more than 90% of working women (HCP, 2013).

Women lead all agro-processing and marketing activities, take part in production, & are specifically involved in seed selection

Attention within the planning process and implementation of interventions

The necessary level of analysis to effectively target vulnerable populations has not been undertaken for the cashew VC.

Gender issues have been considered mainly through quotas (50% women training participants; 30% women to benefit from loans, 40% youth quota for loans.

Gender related issues are better addressed than those related to youth and poor because women play a key role in the dairy VC.

Although Inclusiveness of women is an explicit objective, other vulnerable groups are not clearly involved. Specific actions for young people are integrated into the Bank’s interventions, but mainly from a social perspective rather than an AVCD one.

Though gender balance got a lot of attention, the youth was not considered in the planning process. Women were assigned quotas of beneficiaries, but it is unclear in which way project action was adapted to suit the more vulnerable.

Despite the opportunities offered by the cocoa sector to women, youth and vulnerable populations, notably in the production and first processing stages of the VC, AfDB interventions in the cocoa value chain -though they work with smallholders- do not focus on vulnerable groups.

Women have been assigned quotas in terms of benefiting from the project. However the levels of the quotas remain low given the importance of women in cassava production, transformation and marketing.

Neither intervention is characterized by a strong consideration of inclusiveness of vulnerable populations. Indeed, they tend to be oriented towards larger farms in view of creating commercial producers.

The project favors large industrial processing units rather than smaller ones closer & better adapted to the needs of smallholders. No attention has been given to supporting women's groups or smallholder associations although it helps them access land, inputs & credit, by opening a bank.

Evidence of benefit While participation is addressed via quotas it is not clear how this will translate to ensure benefits.

Most of the added value created may end up concentrated in the hands of large companies.

Increased access reliable water supply and rural feeder roads have contributed to: (i) Reduced trekking distance/time for women to collect water; (ii) Improved domestic gender/familial relations as a result of time saved; (iii) Increased women’s productivity & income particularly in the informal sector & SMEs.

Uncertain - most of the added value created may end up concentrated in the hands of large companies.

Though added value within the fish value chain will most probably increase significantly, how well it will be distributed across value chain actors is uncertain.


The project has supported pre-financing producers to allow investing in quality inputs (seeds, chemicals, and fertilizers) and improve productivity but the system does not fully benefit vulnerable populations due to their limited involvement within the cooperatives through which it functions.

Quotas have ensured vulnerable people receive training and cassava cuttings, but it appears that benefits do not extend much further. Though added value within the cassava value chain will most probably increase, how well it will be distributed among value chain actors is still uncertain.

Inclusiveness was not a priority in PAPMV and PNEEI. In PNEEI, interventions were not focused on the most vulnerable populations.



Annex 4 — Analysis of Sustainability in Case Studies

Project/program Zambia Rwanda DR Congo Uganda Kenya Côte d’Ivoire Liberia Morocco Mozambique

CIDP LISP PADEBL PADIR LEAF II KOSFIP PAIA-ID SUCDEN SAPEC PAPNEEI PAPMV BLICRP

Institutional sustainability

❙ Scant attention given to bulking center operational modalities and governance.

❙ Collection centers management seems to be an issue. Remain government owned and they require more extension and support from the government.

❙ Context of a fragile State.

❙ Financial mechanisms of the sector’s institutional framework are not established.

❙ Irrigation schemes are working and managed by the water associations in a good and sustainable way.

❙ Producers’ cooperatives capacity building is not sustainable (poor quality of training materials...).

❙ Cooperatives supported are sustainable structures.

❙ Context of a fragile State; Most of the research staff trained have resigned.

❙ Issue not specifically addressed by the project.

❙ Capacity and institution building support is provided.

❙ Wambao and RBL ensures proper operation and maintenance of infrastructures.

Political sustainability

❙ Strong political will of GoZ to develop VC.

❙ Strong support from government.

❙ Low budget allocation

❙ Context of a fragile State

❙ Stable political will to fight illegal fishing at presidential level.

❙ Lack of support from national and Country government to enforce rules.

❙ High political willingness. ❙ Context of a fragile State; but the VC is priority for the government.

❙ Likely. ❙ Political will of the Moroccan authorities to continue the reforms is considered likely.

❙ Strong political will to limit rice imports by increasing national rice production.

Financial and economic sustainability (target groups)

❙ Cashew production should have a secure market for the years to come. Competitiveness of processing sector: Zambian labor costs are relatively low. All the above factors positively contribute to financial sustainability.

❙ The market for processed milk is small. Small country, low consumption of milk per capita.

❙ The VC is still not competitive against imports.

❙ The financial and economic sustainability of the activity relies on the capacity to manage fish stocks adequately and combat illegal fishing. This is far from guaranteed.

❙ Farmers face problems in accessing the market.

❙ The downward trend observed in the cocoa international price since 2016 is a serious threat to the sustainability of the AfDB’s support to the sector, and to the cocoa value chain sustainability as a whole.

❙ VC is expected to be sustainable.

❙ Considered as likely.

❙ Not considered as an issue (budget support).

❙ Rice competitiveness is not established: costs are high (inputs, transport...).

Financial and economic sustainability (institutions)

❙ Scant attention given to bulking center business model. No economic calculations associated to bulking center or nursery operation.

❙ MCCs face administrative challenges.

❙ Funds not available to remunerate maintenance committees.

❙ This dimension is not tackled adequately in a context of strong illegal fishing.

❙ NA ❙ Negatively impacted by the low cocoa international price (State Budget).


❙ Inadequate financial resources to cover operating and maintenance costs. Agricultural water price not revised as planned (politically sensitive).


❙ Little attention is given to this issue by the project.

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Institutional sustainability

❙ Scant attention given to bulking center operational modalities and governance.

❙ Collection centers management seems to be an issue. Remain government owned and they require more extension and support from the government.


❙ Financial mechanisms of the sector’s institutional framework are not established.

❙ Irrigation schemes are working and managed by the water associations in a good and sustainable way.

❙ Producers’ cooperatives capacity building is not sustainable (poor quality of training materials...).

❙ Cooperatives supported are sustainable structures.

❙ Context of a fragile State; Most of the research staff trained have resigned.

❙ Issue not specifically addressed by the project.

❙ Capacity and institution building support is provided.

❙ Wambao and RBL ensures proper operation and maintenance of infrastructures.

Political sustainability

❙ Strong political will of GoZ to develop VC.

❙ Strong support from government.

❙ Low budget allocation

❙ Context of a fragile State

❙ Stable political will to fight illegal fishing at presidential level.

❙ Lack of support from national and Country government to enforce rules.

❙ High political willingness. ❙ Context of a fragile State; but the VC is priority for the government.

❙ Likely. ❙ Political will of the Moroccan authorities to continue the reforms is considered likely.

❙ Strong political will to limit rice imports by increasing national rice production.

Financial and economic sustainability (target groups)

❙ Cashew production should have a secure market for the years to come. Competitiveness of processing sector: Zambian labor costs are relatively low. All the above factors positively contribute to financial sustainability.

❙ The market for processed milk is small. Small country, low consumption of milk per capita.

❙ The VC is still not competitive against imports.

❙ The financial and economic sustainability of the activity relies on the capacity to manage fish stocks adequately and combat illegal fishing. This is far from guaranteed.

❙ Farmers face problems in accessing the market.

❙ The downward trend observed in the cocoa international price since 2016 is a serious threat to the sustainability of the AfDB’s support to the sector, and to the cocoa value chain sustainability as a whole.

❙ VC is expected to be sustainable.



❙ Rice competitiveness is not established: costs are high (inputs, transport...).

Financial and economic sustainability (institutions)

❙ Scant attention given to bulking center business model. No economic calculations associated to bulking center or nursery operation.

❙ MCCs face administrative challenges.

❙ Funds not available to remunerate maintenance committees.

❙ This dimension is not tackled adequately in a context of strong illegal fishing.

❙ NA ❙ Negatively impacted by the low cocoa international price (State Budget).


❙ Inadequate financial resources to cover operating and maintenance costs. Agricultural water price not revised as planned (politically sensitive).


❙ Little attention is given to this issue by the project.




Sociocultural sustainability

❙ Community participation in feeder road maintenance is lacking.

❙ Low consumption of milk per capita.

❙ Beneficiaries have willing to pay for the service provided by the rehabilitated market infrastructures, but inadequate for slaughter house.

❙ Conditions for a good level of appropriation by beneficiaries (participatory approach) is lacking.

❙ Some of the involved farmers are not used to work in cash crops.

❙ Sociocultural aspects are not specifically addressed by the project.


❙ Lack of adoption of new technique- localized irrigation system- by beneficiaries.


❙ Sociocultural aspects are not addressed by the project.

Environmental sustainability

❙ The planned project activities, by their size, will not create new environmental and social issues.

❙ Sanitary conditions are slightly improved (rehabilitated facilities).

❙ Capacity to curb illegal fishing is possible but not guaranteed.

❙ Oil extraction in the area (could end up polluting the lake ecosystem).

❙ Not always the right technical solutions applied (sprinkler irrigation instead of drip).

❙ Climate risk (no cocoa varieties resistant and / or adapted to climate change have been developed).

❙ Cooperatives contribute to a sustainable management of the cocoa sector (e.g. renewing plantations).

❙ Agriculture technologies applied promote efficient use of land and water.


❙ No major negative and/or irreversible environmental impacts. Canals constructed to withstand extreme floods and coastal storms.

Technological sustainability

❙ Support to large – still unidentified – processing plant, and not the existing processing units (smaller).

❙ Not all MCCs are doing well; are not connected to electricity of only single phase connection.

❙ Infrastructures are not equipped, hence not sustainable.

❙ Accompanying support services are not established in a sustainable way. It limits cage fish farming sustainability.


❙ Likely. ❙ Processing machines imported, the spare parts are not available in country.

❙ Challenge: the ability of the stakeholders to correctly use and maintain the system.


❙ Farmers trained on irrigation will have built their capacities for the long term.

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Sociocultural sustainability

❙ Community participation in feeder road maintenance is lacking.

❙ Low consumption of milk per capita.

❙ Beneficiaries have willing to pay for the service provided by the rehabilitated market infrastructures, but inadequate for slaughter house.

❙ Conditions for a good level of appropriation by beneficiaries (participatory approach) is lacking.

❙ Some of the involved farmers are not used to work in cash crops.



❙ Lack of adoption of new technique- localized irrigation system- by beneficiaries.


❙ Sociocultural aspects are not addressed by the project.

Environmental sustainability

❙ The planned project activities, by their size, will not create new environmental and social issues.

❙ Sanitary conditions are slightly improved (rehabilitated facilities).

❙ Capacity to curb illegal fishing is possible but not guaranteed.

❙ Oil extraction in the area (could end up polluting the lake ecosystem).


❙ Climate risk (no cocoa varieties resistant and / or adapted to climate change have been developed).

❙ Cooperatives contribute to a sustainable management of the cocoa sector (e.g. renewing plantations).

❙ Agriculture technologies applied promote efficient use of land and water.


❙ No major negative and/or irreversible environmental impacts. Canals constructed to withstand extreme floods and coastal storms.

Technological sustainability

❙ Support to large – still unidentified – processing plant, and not the existing processing units (smaller).

❙ Not all MCCs are doing well; are not connected to electricity of only single phase connection.

❙ Infrastructures are not equipped, hence not sustainable.

❙ Accompanying support services are not established in a sustainable way. It limits cage fish farming sustainability.


❙ Likely. ❙ Processing machines imported, the spare parts are not available in country.

❙ Challenge: the ability of the stakeholders to correctly use and maintain the system.


❙ Farmers trained on irrigation will have built their capacities for the long term.


Annex 5 — Evidence of Fundamentals and Enablers of AVCD in Country Case Studies

Wheat (Morocco)

Cassava(Liberia)

Rice (Mozambique)

Dairy(Rwanda)

Beef (DRC)

Tomato (Kenya)


Cashew (Zambia)

Fish (Uganda)

Value chain analysis No evidence of VC analysis in any of the nine cases: distribution of VA among actors, mapping of VC actors, cost of production. In practice, VC analysis helps to maps and understands the status, functioning and value along the chain and is the overarching analysis that is needed at the commencement of an intervention. Though not complete, Zambia cashew nut has some indication for VC analysis

Profitability with value addition

❙ No Value addition supported

❙ Value addition supported (processing centers and trainings) but profitability is unclear

❙ Value addition supported (through private sector) but profitability is unclear

❙ Value addition supported (processed milk to market with MCC ) but profitability is unclear

❙ Value addition supported (slaughter & market facilities) but profitability is unclear

❙ No value addition support

❙ No value addition support beyond post-harvest loss reduction. Profitability remains questionable with volatile international price.

❙ Value addition supported (processing facilities bulk centers and training) but profitability is unclear

❙ value addition support (landing sites)


In all nine cases M & E of projects exists, but it has weak linkage with the theory of change (ToC) associated with VC support. Insufficient M&E to assess the extent of impact and sustainability, which indicates that there is room for improvement in M&E systems and knowledge management. During implementation, the lack of consideration for responsiveness to market needs led to sustainability issues.

Inclusiveness (see Annex 3 above)

❙ Supported gender mainstreaming at strategic level.

❙ Earlier support targeted only large farms.

❙ No quota is assigned ❙ Benefits are not clear

❙ Inclusiveness is objective of projects. Scoping studies made to integrate women and youth in project activities. Quota is assigned. Distribution of VA benefit is not clear

❙ Women prioritized in training activities.

❙ But, limited effort for inclusion.

❙ Poor farmers are less of a target.

❙ Include poor family through one cow per poor family policy.

❙ Youth and involved in transportation and trading.

❙ Quota is assigned.

❙ Quota is assigned. ❙ Women encourage to participate infrastructure Management.

❙ Benefits are unclear

❙ Quota is assigned to women but not for youth.


❙ Quota is assigned to women/youth beneficiaries and infrastructure management.

❙ Benefit remains unclear

❙ Quota is assigned to women/ youth.


❙ Quota is assigned to women/youth beneficiaries. Intervention targeted poor families (depend on mukene fish)


Sustained Impact (see Annex 4 above)

❙ Sustainability is likely but challenged with lack of adequate maintenance and operation cost of infrastructure

❙ Strong political support for the VC but context of fragile state (weak institutions and governance)

❙ Strong political support and good monument of infrastructure but competiveness of rice is not established (less attention on financial and economic viability)

❙ Strong political support, but some milk collection centers faces administrative and technical challenges (lack of power supply). The market is also small due to small size of population

❙ Beneficiary willing to maintain market infrastructure. But the meat is not competitive with imported one.

❙ Slaughter house is not equipped.

❙ Irrigation scheme has good management in place.

❙ Lack of market and Inappropriate irrigation design for the VC

❙ Strong political support; ❙ Infrastructure is technically sustainable; but volatile international cocoa price negatively affect the financial and economic sustainability.

❙ Strong political support and competitive market exists. But the modalities of operations for bulking centers and economic viability of the planned processing unit is uncertain.

❙ Strong political support exists but the financial and economic sustainability of the activity relies on the capacity to manage fish stocks adequately and combat illegal fishing. This is far from guaranteed.

Infrastructure & technology

❙ Irrigation ❙ Storage ❙ Marketing infrastructure ❙ Certified seeds

❙ Feeder roads ❙ Market place, processing unit

❙ Improved cassava variety

❙ Irrigation, feeder roads ❙ Improved seeds

❙ Milk collection centers ❙ Water supply, cattle market, vet clinics

❙ Improved breeds (Artificial insemination)

❙ Slaughter houses, market place, schools and water supply

❙ Irrigation ❙ Improved seeds

❙ Collection centers, feeder roads, drying sheds and fermentation tanks

❙ Feeder roads, bulking centers, improved varieties.

❙ Landing site, cold storage

❙ Feeder roads ❙ Lake surveillance equipment

Policy and regulatory environment

❙ Policy dialogue (national strategies/laws)

❙ No evidence ❙ No evidence ❙ Diary subsector strategy, quality standard for milk

❙ No evidence ❙ No evidence ❙ No Evidence ❙ No evidence ❙ Fishery Conservation Policy;

❙ Surveillance for illegal fishing

Access to finance ❙ Support to agricultural insurances

❙ No support ❙ Indirectly engage contract farming

❙ Creation and support to farmers' coop

❙ Support to MFI ❙ No support ❙ Pre-financing of producers through big companies

❙ Financial services to producers and processors

❙ No support

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Wheat (Morocco)

Cassava(Liberia)

Rice (Mozambique)

Dairy(Rwanda)

Beef (DRC)

Tomato (Kenya)


Cashew (Zambia)

Fish (Uganda)

Value chain analysis No evidence of VC analysis in any of the nine cases: distribution of VA among actors, mapping of VC actors, cost of production. In practice, VC analysis helps to maps and understands the status, functioning and value along the chain and is the overarching analysis that is needed at the commencement of an intervention. Though not complete, Zambia cashew nut has some indication for VC analysis

Profitability with value addition

❙ No Value addition supported

❙ Value addition supported (processing centers and trainings) but profitability is unclear

❙ Value addition supported (through private sector) but profitability is unclear

❙ Value addition supported (processed milk to market with MCC ) but profitability is unclear

❙ Value addition supported (slaughter & market facilities) but profitability is unclear

❙ No value addition support

❙ No value addition support beyond post-harvest loss reduction. Profitability remains questionable with volatile international price.

❙ Value addition supported (processing facilities bulk centers and training) but profitability is unclear

❙ value addition support (landing sites)


In all nine cases M & E of projects exists, but it has weak linkage with the theory of change (ToC) associated with VC support. Insufficient M&E to assess the extent of impact and sustainability, which indicates that there is room for improvement in M&E systems and knowledge management. During implementation, the lack of consideration for responsiveness to market needs led to sustainability issues.

Inclusiveness (see Annex 3 above)

❙ Supported gender mainstreaming at strategic level.

❙ Earlier support targeted only large farms.

❙ No quota is assigned ❙ Benefits are not clear

❙ Inclusiveness is objective of projects. Scoping studies made to integrate women and youth in project activities. Quota is assigned. Distribution of VA benefit is not clear

❙ Women prioritized in training activities.

❙ But, limited effort for inclusion.

❙ Poor farmers are less of a target.

❙ Include poor family through one cow per poor family policy.

❙ Youth and involved in transportation and trading.

❙ Quota is assigned.

❙ Quota is assigned. ❙ Women encourage to participate infrastructure Management.


❙ Quota is assigned to women but not for youth.


❙ Quota is assigned to women/youth beneficiaries and infrastructure management.


❙ Quota is assigned to women/ youth.


❙ Quota is assigned to women/youth beneficiaries. Intervention targeted poor families (depend on mukene fish)


Sustained Impact (see Annex 4 above)

❙ Sustainability is likely but challenged with lack of adequate maintenance and operation cost of infrastructure

❙ Strong political support for the VC but context of fragile state (weak institutions and governance)

❙ Strong political support and good monument of infrastructure but competiveness of rice is not established (less attention on financial and economic viability)

❙ Strong political support, but some milk collection centers faces administrative and technical challenges (lack of power supply). The market is also small due to small size of population

❙ Beneficiary willing to maintain market infrastructure. But the meat is not competitive with imported one.

❙ Slaughter house is not equipped.

❙ Irrigation scheme has good management in place.

❙ Lack of market and Inappropriate irrigation design for the VC

❙ Strong political support; ❙ Infrastructure is technically sustainable; but volatile international cocoa price negatively affect the financial and economic sustainability.

❙ Strong political support and competitive market exists. But the modalities of operations for bulking centers and economic viability of the planned processing unit is uncertain.

❙ Strong political support exists but the financial and economic sustainability of the activity relies on the capacity to manage fish stocks adequately and combat illegal fishing. This is far from guaranteed.

Infrastructure & technology

❙ Irrigation ❙ Storage ❙ Marketing infrastructure ❙ Certified seeds

❙ Feeder roads ❙ Market place, processing unit

❙ Improved cassava variety

❙ Irrigation, feeder roads ❙ Improved seeds

❙ Milk collection centers ❙ Water supply, cattle market, vet clinics

❙ Improved breeds (Artificial insemination)

❙ Slaughter houses, market place, schools and water supply

❙ Irrigation ❙ Improved seeds

❙ Collection centers, feeder roads, drying sheds and fermentation tanks

❙ Feeder roads, bulking centers, improved varieties.

❙ Landing site, cold storage

❙ Feeder roads ❙ Lake surveillance equipment

Policy and regulatory environment

❙ Policy dialogue (national strategies/laws)

❙ No evidence ❙ No evidence ❙ Diary subsector strategy, quality standard for milk

❙ No evidence ❙ No evidence ❙ No Evidence ❙ No evidence ❙ Fishery Conservation Policy;

❙ Surveillance for illegal fishing

Access to finance ❙ Support to agricultural insurances

❙ No support ❙ Indirectly engage contract farming

❙ Creation and support to farmers' coop

❙ Support to MFI ❙ No support ❙ Pre-financing of producers through big companies

❙ Financial services to producers and processors

❙ No support


Wheat (Morocco)

Cassava(Liberia)

Rice (Mozambique)

Dairy(Rwanda)

Beef (DRC)

Tomato (Kenya)


Cashew (Zambia)

Fish (Uganda)

Business support,organizational capacity building, linkages with market

❙ Support for water resources management but still lacks management capacity

❙ Training to beneficiaries but formation of farmers’ organization is lacking.

❙ Market linkage is also weak

❙ Facilitated contract farming but producers lack adequate capacity to negotiate

❙ Support formation of cooperative; but still lacks management capacity

❙ No evidence of business support

❙ Various initiatives supported (pack houses, water associa-tions to manage irrigation schemes, market access). Management capacity is limited.

❙ No evidence of business support.

❙ Support services, knowledge sharing


Private sector and linkages of VC actors

❙ No evidence ❙ Promoting agro- entrepreneurs

❙ Producers and private sector processors linked


❙ No evidence ❙ No evidence ❙ Engage big private company to support cocoa producers

❙ Promoting agro- entrepreneurs

❙ No evidence

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Wheat (Morocco)

Cassava(Liberia)

Rice (Mozambique)

Dairy(Rwanda)

Beef (DRC)

Tomato (Kenya)


Cashew (Zambia)

Fish (Uganda)

Business support,organizational capacity building, linkages with market

❙ Support for water resources management but still lacks management capacity

❙ Training to beneficiaries but formation of farmers’ organization is lacking.

❙ Market linkage is also weak

❙ Facilitated contract farming but producers lack adequate capacity to negotiate

❙ Support formation of cooperative; but still lacks management capacity

❙ No evidence of business support

❙ Various initiatives supported (pack houses, water associa-tions to manage irrigation schemes, market access). Management capacity is limited.


❙ Support services, knowledge sharing


Private sector and linkages of VC actors

❙ No evidence ❙ Promoting agro- entrepreneurs



❙ No evidence ❙ No evidence ❙ Engage big private company to support cocoa producers

❙ Promoting agro- entrepreneurs

❙ No evidence


Endnotes

1. African Development Bank Group (2013). At the Center of Africa’s Transformation: Strategy for 2013–2022.

2. IDEV (2016). Evaluation of Bank Support to the Agricultural Value Chain: Policy & Strategy Review Report.

3. The High 5s are: Feed Africa, Light up and Power Africa, Industrialize Africa, Integrate Africa, and Improve the quality of life for the people of Africa

4. CT Fitz-Gibbon (1996) American Evaluation Association Journal. “A theory-based evaluation is one in which the selection of features to evaluate is determined by an explicit conceptualization in terms of a theory, a theory which attempts to explain how the program produces the desired effects.”

5. Pawson & Tilley, (1997).Realistic Evaluation. SAGE publications, London.

6. The overview of the portfolio covers all 283 projects, PBOs, Studies, ISP, emergency assistance approved in the period 2005–2016. However, the assessment of the features of value chain was done for 160 interventions which excluded emergency assistances, feasibility studies and other studies.

7. Mbabazi Moyo et al. (2015). Transforming Africa’s Agriculture to Improve Competitiveness. Africa Competitiveness Report 2015.

8. Conde, Heinrigs, & O’Sullivan (2015). Africa competitiveness report 2015. Chapter 2.3: ‘Tapping the Potential of Global Value Chains for Africa’. OECD.

9. Mbabazi Moyo et al. (2015). Transforming Africa’s Agriculture to Improve Competitiveness. Africa Competitiveness Report 2015.

10. World Bank, (2010). Building Competitiveness in Africa’s Agriculture: A guide to value chain concepts and applications; IFAD & MSU, 2012. A Conceptual Framework for Promoting Inclusive Agricultural Value Chains. Cited in IDEV (2016). Sydo (2011). Global Value Chains: Impacts and Implications.

11. Nang'ole, Mithöfer, & Franzel (2011). Review of guidelines and manuals for value chain analysis for agricultural and forest products.

12. Altenburg (2007). Donor Approaches to Supporting Pro-Poor Value Chains.

13. Webber & Labaste (2010). Building Competitiveness in Africa’s Agriculture: A Guide to Value Chain Concepts and Applications.

14. African Union Commission. (2015). Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want.

15. African Development Bank Group (2009). Bank Group Regional Integration Strategy 2009–2012.

16. African Development Bank Group (2015). Regional Integration Policy and Strategy (RIPoS) 2014–2023, Integrating Africa: Creating the Next Global Market. Abidjan.

17. The portfolio data were extracted from the Bank’s database and latest updated on 15 December 2016. It has to be also noted that terminated (8) and abandoned (1) interventions are excluded from the portfolio analysis.

18. The three most recent available CSPs were purposely selected within each of the five regions resulting in a total sample of 15 CSPs. The resulting sample that was analyzed included CSPs for: Algeria (2016–2018); Cameroon (2015–2020); Chad (2015–2020); Democratic Republic of Congo (2013–2017); Djibouti (2016–2020); Egypt (2015-2019); Ethiopia (2016–2020); Guinee-Bissau (2015–2019); Mali (2015–2019); Mauritania (2016–2020); Namibia (2014–2018); Senegal (2016–2020); Seychelles (2016–2020); South Africa (2013–2017); and Swaziland (2014–2018).

19. Feed Africa is one of the High 5 development priorities for the continent proposed by the Bank. The strategy is described in more details in the next section.

20. AsDB (2012). Independent Evaluation: Support for Agricultural Value Chain Development.

21. https://microlinks.org/good-practice-center/value-chain-wiki

22. Wheat, cassava, cocoa, meat, fish, tomato, dairy, cashew and rice.

23. African Development Bank (2016). Feed Africa: Strategy for Agricultural Transformation in Africa.

24. African Development Bank (2016). Bank Group Strategy for Jobs for Youth in Africa, 2016–2025.

25. PAR, Agricultural Infrastructure and Youth Agribusiness Project in Malawi

26. PAR, Livestock Infrastructure Support Project in Zambia

27. GIZ (2012). Gender and Value Chains.

28. AsDB (2012). Independent Evaluation: Support for Agricultural Value Chain Development.

29. Evaluation of the African Development Bank’s support to the Agricultural Value Chains Development, Case studies – Zambia report (Final). August 2017

30. M4P (2008). Making Value Chains Work Better for the Poor: A Tool book for Practitioners of Value Chain Analysis

31. Altenburg (2007). Donor Approaches to Supporting Pro-Poor Value Chains.

32. Pye-Smith, C. (2013). Making the connection: Value chains for transforming smallholder agriculture. CTA.

33. Neven, D (2014). Developing Sustainable Food Value Chains: Guiding Principles. FAO.

34. Institutional, political, financial and economic (target groups), financial and economic (institutions), socio-cultural, environmental and technological.

35. OECD (2012). Greening Development: Enhancing Capacity for Environmental Management and Governance.

36. Danida (2014). Danida Green Growth Guidance Note.

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37. African Development Bank (2016). Feed Africa: Strategy for Agricultural Transformation in Africa. p. v.

38. Agricultural value chain finance strategy and design Technical Note, IFAD, 2012, p.28.

39. “Support for Agricultural Value Chain Development” IED, ADB 2012, ix Executive Summary.

40. Ibid.

41. PAR, Gazetted Forests Participatory Management Project for Redd+ (PGFC/REDD+) in Burkina Faso

42. PAR, Sustainable Land Management in Gambia

43. PAR, Programme de Developpement des Chaines de Valeurs Agricoles in Cameroon

44. It improved its rank from 130 in 2008 to 68 in 2016 among 190 economies in the ease of doing business. Source: Tradingeconomics.com/world Bank

45. PCR, Livestock Infrastructure Support Programme in Rwanda, 15 December 2015.

46. Nang'ole, Mithöfer, & Franzel (2011). Review of guidelines and manuals for value chain analysis for agricultural and forest products.

47. CT Fitz-Gibbon (1996) American Evaluation Association Journal. “A theory-based evaluation is one in which the selection of features to evaluate is determined by an explicit conceptualization in terms of a theory, a theory which attempts to explain how the program produces the desired effects.

48. Pawson & Tilley, (1997) acknowledges that that the same theories do not generate the same results in different locations, in unique contexts, with varied stakeholders and in different time frames.

49. Bank (2016). Feed Africa: Strategy for Agricultural Transformation in Africa 2016–2025. p. 11.

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About this evaluation

The Independent Development Evaluation of the African Development Bank Group (the Bank) conducted an evaluation of Bank’s support for agricultural value chains development (AVCD) over the period 2005–2016. The evaluation aimed to: i) assess the relevance, inclusiveness, effectiveness, and sustainability of the Bank’s support to value chains development; and ii) provide lessons and recommendations for the implementation and design of agricultural value chains interventions associated with the Feed Africa Strategy. The evaluation is theory-based with a focus on learning. It takes a non-traditional approach in that it does not evaluate specific investments or operations, but rather aims to understand how the Bank’s operations have applied the AVCD theory of change in different contexts. It draws evidence from a literature review, policy and strategy review, portfolio review and 9 country case studies.

An IDEV Thematic Evaluation

idev.afdb.org

African Development Bank GroupAvenue Joseph Anoma, 01 BP 1387 Abidjan 01, Côte d'IvoirePhone: +225 20 26 20 41E-mail: [email protected]

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