Workneh Ayalew
FARM–Africa, Addis Ababa
Ethiopia
The paper describes the community participatory research and development activities of FARM–Africa, a non-governmental organisation, in Ethiopia. Special attention is given to the role of stakeholder participation in sustaining the benefits of projects beyond the life of a project.
FARM–Africa (Food and Agricultural Research Management–Africa) set up in 1985 is a registered charity in the United Kingdom. It started operation in Ethiopia in 1988. FARM–Africa is committed to helping poor farmers and herders of Africa to help themselves. In partnership with the community and local institutions, FARM implements community-based agricultural and community development projects to try and demonstrate viable strategies and techniques in crop, livestock husbandry and forestry to produce more food, in a sustainable way and with due consideration to the environment. In so doing FARM also strives to influence agricultural development policy at national and international levels.
Wherever possible FARM works with or through other development groups and African governments, providing technical expertise, training and other inputs. FARM currently operates a total of 12 projects in Africa: six in Ethiopia, two each in Kenya and South Africa, and one project each in Tanzania and Uganda.
FARM's overall goal is to enable marginal farmers and herders to make sustainable improvements to their well-being through more effective management of their renewable resources with the following principles of operation:
a. FARM–Africa works in close partnership with communities and their institutions
b. wherever possible it tries to test new ideas and approaches for increasing the productivity of the natural resources
c. it facilitates the dissemination and adoption of its successful experiences, and
d. it pays particular attention to the role and welfare of women.
The Dairy Goat Development Project was started in 1988. It aimed to improve the welfare of families in the densely populated highlands of Ethiopia through improving the production of their goats. The project also aimed to strengthen the capacity of Ethiopian institutions to carry out research and development on goats.
In the densely populated agricultural highlands, the growing human population pressure on the already scarce agricultural land results in decreasing resource of the subsistence smallholder farmers to earn their living. There is an obvious urgent need for the development of viable development options for these smallholder farmers. An intensive goat enterprise was identified as one option allowing such families to improve their welfare in the eastern and southern Ethiopian highlands where the goat has already been used as a suitable small multi-purpose animal.
Some of the direct benefits from this project have been more milk for home consumption and sale, increased cash income for food in emergencies and basic necessities, improved food security during the lean periods of the production year, and some accumulated capital invested in the form of livestock. Raising goats have assisted families to obtain milking cows, ploughing oxen and manure for crop production. By encouraging participating women to organise themselves into self-help credit groups, and by enabling them to manage revolving credit funds and basic animal health care, the project tried to empower women to take a more direct role in receiving extension services and household decision making.
Some of the other less obvious benefits are: soil and water conservation through growing forage crops for goats; stall-feeding of goats leading to reduce the demand on children and allowing them to attend school, and enhancement of women's skills and status in their community. The project was designed to focus on women as they traditionally look after goats in Ethiopia. The project resources were directed to the most needy families identified by their communities.
Components of the Dairy Goat Development Project extension package include: improved forage development, basic goat health care, extension training, organisation of self-help women groups, revolving credit and crossbreeding.
In its nine years of implementation in selected sites in seven districts of eastern and southern Ethiopia, the project has made remarkable impact on the lives of 1500 families. Extension of the technology package to similar adjacent districts is being planned. From lessons learned so far with rural communities, the technology package is now made more comprehensive by including components of human health and nutrition as well as family planning.
Farmer's Research Project was started in 1991 in the North Omo Region of South-Western Ethiopia covering about 35,000 km2. The population was estimated to be about a million with a third concentrated in Welayta, which cover only 10% of the land area.
The purpose of the project is to establish sustainable systems for developing appropriate agricultural technology involving farmers in research. It is hoped that this will lead to improvement in incomes of resource-poor farming households. The major assumption that underlies the project is that Farmers' Participatory Research (FPR) is a cost-effective way of generating and spreading appropriate technology. FPR promotes research in which peasant farmers play leading roles in identifying and designing research as well as carrying it out and evaluating it.
To advance FPR, the project established links between farmers (and their communities), researchers and government and NGO extension workers. It carried out research and training activities; conducted detailed studies of the project area, ranging from participatory needs assessment to detailed topical and special studies of particular agricultural commodities and problems and published project documents.
The project is now in a winding down phase and another extension phase is under preparation.
The natural forests of Ethiopia are disappearing at an increasingly fast rate. With the loss of these forests comes increased soil erosion, loss of bio-diversity, and ultimately, reduced water flows in streams and rivers. Poor natural resources management practices and declining agricultural yields are intimately linked.
Since October 1992, FARM's community forest and wildlife conservation project has been working with farmers in four pilot sites in central highlands to find ways to protect and conserve the remaining natural forest and wildlife through the co-operation and involvement of the people, rather than by restricting access.
In 1996 the project entered a new phase. The new phase will both broaden project activities to include land-use planning and on-farm trials to improve agricultural production at existing sites; as well as extends joint forest management to state forests of Chilimo and Bonga; and an eco-tourism venture on the shores of East Langano lake.
The community-oriented rural development project in Tigray started its main development phase in October 1994 after a two-year period of survey and pilot activities. The aim of the project is to improve the welfare and income of about 70,000 people in the dry highlands of the northern part of Tigray close to the Eritrean border. It attempts to do this in a way which emphasises and enhances the ability of local rural people and their community institutions to plan and manage their own development. CORDEP is mainly involved in water development, agriculture, household income support, training and community development.
Food-for-work has been used for constructing 160 km access roads opening up hitherto inaccessible parts of the districts. This enabled merchants, grain millers and government officers to provide services to these remote communities. Water is a scarce commodity in Tigray and farmers, especially women, regularly walk up to six hours a day to collect water that is often of poor quality. Work on 43 water points and gully plugging has been carried out.
Establishment and support of community nurseries and paravets are also undertaken side by side. Further the project works with the farmers to solve specific local problems. This includes involving them in selected trials such as crop variety trials to select for drought resistance, and screening sorghum varieties for tolerance to the parasitic weeds (specifically Striga). Each of the 135 poor women selected by the community was provided with two breeding female goats on credit basis to help them start a small goat enterprise.
The training programme lies at the heart of the project's aim to enhance the skills of the peasants and the government staff who serve them. To date 10 technical papers and two results of diagnostic studies have been published while results of other six studies are in the process of publication.
The project will finish its first phase in December 1998. However, review of the first phase of the project has shown its significant impact on the socio-economic life of the rural people. Hence it is planned to extend its activities to other areas in the region who seek such support.
The Afar Pastoral Development Project has just been launched in two zones of the arid and semi-arid lowlands of the Afar Region. Focusing mainly on the camel, it also operates in areas of cattle and small stock development. The project framework was based on FARM's experience in a similar project in northern Kenya which has been implemented since 1989.
The project provides livestock development services using a mobile out-reach pastoral development approach. It also tests interventions to develop suitable packages to replicate in similar areas and at a wider scale. Further the experience gained in the initial two-year pilot phase will be tested in the Borana and Somali rangelands of the neighbouring regions.
FARM established a strong collaborative relationship with the people of Konso special Wereda and their institutions through its Dairy Goat Development Project (DGDP) and Farmers Research Project (FRP) programmes, since 1994. As a result, FARM was invited again by the Wereda administration in 1996 to expand some of the components of Farmers' Research and Dairy Goat Development projects and also launch a new initiative focusing mainly on capacity development.
It is, thus, in line with this request and FARM's knowledge about Konso's agricultural problem—that the project commenced in January 1998, in close collaboration with Konso Development Association (KDA). The purpose of the project is to build the capacity of local people, their leaders and organisations, to plan and manage measures against drought related disasters. As an initial step for the two-year pilot project, a participatory rapid appraisal (PRA) workshop was conducted with the local staff of Konso local government offices and KDA officials. During the period February to April 1998, a socio-economic base-line study was carried out in two of the 30 peasant associations in Konso.
FARM's projects are designed as long-term initiatives which may extend up to 10–15 years, but each of them have short-term (3–5 years) operational plans, objectives and goals. Apart from the short time involved in the implementation and evaluation of projects, the specific goals and objectives of these projects are formulated taking into account concerns and expectations of donors.
Long-term continuity of introduced technologies is assured from the very beginning through the direct involvement of local partners in the planning and implementation of the projects. Local partners will have to however depend on the available financial and technical resources to continue promoting introduced technologies. This means that project activities may not continue with the same vigour and focus after phasing out of projects. This also relates to evaluation of long-term sustainability of the projects, which in the main remains to be the responsibility of collaborating local institutions. Projects during their life-time may evaluate adoption patterns of the introduced technologies; but these do not necessarily constitute assessment of sustainability in the context of this workshop.
FARM's projects are mostly designed to support certain disadvantaged parts of the community, depending on the issues projects are set to address. Taking a wider view of the identified problem, not all members of the community that are influenced (directly or indirectly) by the problem are involved at the early stage in the project planning and implementation. Beneficiaries of projects are selected either by the community itself, as in the case of the Dairy Goat Development Project, or by using certain socio-economic criteria. All stakeholders of the projects may thus not be taken on board.
This certainly has implications in assuring long-term sustainability of the projects. NGOs like FARM may either be duty-bound or expected by their donors to focus development projects at certain sectors of the society. The issue of community participation may still be upheld, though from narrower perspective. But there are indications that even under such circumstances new projects try to consider a wider involvement of the community.
FARM–Africa has learned a lot with regard to community development in the implementation of these projects. These lessons are taken into account in putting together new projects to improve long-term sustainability of the introduced technologies. The tendency now is to try to address selected key problems along with related socio-economic circumstances of the community leading to broader recommendation domain.
