Hypothesis: cost/benefit analysis aids smallholder decision-making

Sorry for the long bout of silence! Is it June already?? The pipeline of stories dried up fast, mainly because everything about being in Ghana was going fine… except, of course, what I came here to do! (…that should sound characteristically familiar to anyone remotely involved in international development work…)

This quote sums up a lot:

I have not failed. I have merely found ten thousand ways that won’t work.

~Thomas Edison

Except, being an engineer, mental math is not my forte. I’ve lost count…!

Anyhow, for now, allow me to share (rant?) a small tidbit of the frustrating realities of working with government in Ghana.

One of the unique facets of EWB’s work with the Ghanaian government is that we integrate to help the organization work better to serve the rural poor. Here on the Agribusiness team partnered with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), that means trying to make the jobs of the front-line staff, the Agriculture Extension Agents, a tad easier, and a bit more effective. This is in contrast to many other Western development organizations who design promising projects, and use MoFA resources (–namely people!) to implement the projects.

The thinking behind investing in MoFA’s people and systems is threefold: 1) EWB’s work is more sustainable when integrated with government systems (EWB’s presence is time-bound, while the government is long-lasting); 2) MoFA is a national organization with the broadest farmer extension service (positive change will effect many farmers); and 3) MoFA has strong bilateral and multilateral financial support which leverages EWB’s work. The thinking, I presume, behind designing projects and using MoFA as an implementer is achieving results. Achieving results is clearly not undesirable, but the latter project approach has implications on the former integration approach.

(Interrupt this rant with a sober note: I’m actually not trying to argue that EWB’s work is the best though the message may come across as such…)

One rich donor project is investing heavily in Ghanaian agriculture development. This is (mostly) a good thing! But MoFA staff, the front-line field workers who interact with farmers for 20-30 years, point to interesting flaws in the rich donor’s poor implementation. Just one example is forcing the formation of farmer groups with 50 members. Developing farmer groups has a lot of benefits to farmers: they can learn together, act as collateral to access loans, achieve greater bargaining power in group marketing, etc. And while I’m a proponent of discovering and sharing local best practices (–promoting positive deviance), externally defining a recipe for farmer groups is a recipe for failure. Development literature points to the benefits of farmer groups if they are small, informal, self-organized, and have a common uniting purpose. EWB’s ground experience supporting farmer group development points to much the same. Among MoFA field staff, this is common knowledge. Forcing the formation of 50-member farmer groups is unnatural for farmers, logistically demanding on project implementers, but looks sharp and is easy to work with in Excel for project designers.

I’ll also let you in on a small secret: Government staff aren’t paid very well. Surprising huh?

But projects using poorly paid government staff has implications on regular government work. Projects need incentives to attract government staff as implementers, and the lures are typically extravagant workshops with exorbitant allowances. Of course, the lures are difficult to pass up by any of us (–after all, that’s the point), and the regular work suffers as a result. The worst part of this situation is that its nothing new—I knew about this problem while studying for an unrelated engineering degree in a quite small, university-town in the well-developed country of Canada. Yet, the practice persists (?)…

What’s more, the lures set precedents and raise expectations of the project beneficiaries (i.e. the government staff, less so the rural poor). Many front-line staff, the Agriculture Extension Agents, were attracted to their low-paying job for internally satisfying motivations. For instance, sympathizing with farmers and working hard to leave a legacy in the community. Another motivation is to gain status in the community. Children saw front-line staff of yesteryear racing around on rare motorcycles, and grew up aspiring—expecting—to be just like them. Those children are the front-line staff of today, and it is fatefully demotivating for them to continue their work without motorcycles. They see their colleagues endowed with motorcycles provided by projects, and learn to expect motorcycles in order to do their regular work. It even becomes a source of shame when they are tasked to improve the lives of farmers who have bought motorcycles with their own income, while they, the government staff members, are hopelessly on foot. And if it’s not motorcycles it’s a supplementary expectation of personal favours, “silent, blind incentives”.

The solution?

Not a clue…

From a big picture perspective, it seems there’s a need to change the rules of the game. The “How”, of course, remains the question…

From my ground perspective, any scalable solution will have to fit these realities. It will have to account for competing priorities. And mitigate prohibitive expectations. And that’s what I’m continuing to figure out!