The World Bank/WBI’s CBNRM Initiative

Case Received: February 6, 1998

Author: Jan Haakonsen

Tel.: +47 22 054121

Email: jan.haakonsen@redcross.no

"It is the view of the evaluation team that the Joint Project is an interesting and in some ways impressive type of project. Not for having solved all development problems in Sinkat; not because the Hadendowa people will not suffer during the next drought; not because all aims have been fulfilled, nor because mistakes have not been made. What impresses the evaluation team is the process through which the project has passed."

-- Manger et al., 1996

Following the disastrous drought in most of the Sahel belt in Africa, the Norwegian Parliament in 1986 decided to allocate NOK 1 billion (approx. USD 160 million at the time) over 5 years to introduce measures intended to help the local population in the affected areas to better cope with future droughts. An ambitious assistance scheme known as the SSE (Sahel, Sudan, Ethiopia) -programme was launched. Norwegian NGOs were invited to propose projects, as 40% of the funds were to be spent through Norwegian "development" organisations.

Despite having very limited experience in rural development, the Norwegian Red Cross (Norcross) proposed an integrated rural development project in Sinkat in the Red Sea Hills of northeastern Sudan. The area, predominantly populated by Hadendowa (Beja) agro-pastoralists, is ecologically extremely marginal and traditionally very drought-prone. The drought in the mid-eighties had particularly severe effects on the local population, and Norcross had been actively involved in drought relief operations there through the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and in collaboration with the Sudanese Red Crescent (SRC). Norcross saw the SSE fund as an opportunity to go beyond the relief effort and "to establish the means of subsistence for up to 250.000 Beja-nomads following a period of prolonged drought. Furthermore, prepare both the population and the environment for coping with climate change in the future", as Norcross stated in the application to NORAD in December 1985.

Thus, what started as an acute relief operation, was to become an ambitious development project, which is now in its 13th year, well beyond the envisioned time frame of five years. The author of this paper has been closely associated with the project since late 1992, first as desk officer and later as development advisor in the International Department of the Norwegian Red Cross.

The predominantly rural and nomadic population of the Red Sea Hills had been severely affected by the drought in the mid-eighties, and most of the population had been temporarily resettled into camps where water and food was distributed. Most of the livestock had succumbed as a consequence of the absence of rain, and the stocks of locally grown sorghum had long since been depleted.

The relief operation was effective, and losses of life were relatively modest. Yet, most of the displaced nomads had but one goal, to build up their animal herds again and resume their traditional way of life. The Hadendowa's love for their land and lifestyle, harsh and difficult as it may seem to outsiders, is notorious.

The basic idea behind what was to be known later as the Joint Project, Sinkat (JPS), was to help the drought-affected people achieve their goal and help avoid a situation in the future where they again would be dependent on emergency relief for survival. New droughts would certainly occur, as they had done for centuries. Was it possible to avoid the most extreme consequences?

In retrospect, too little attention was paid on assessment of the prevailing conditions and to understand all the complexities of the Hadendowa society, particularly since the project has since the onset had as a guiding principle to involve the target population, in a participatory manner. While an anthropological study was undertaken in 1986 to help understand the local society, little emphasis was put in conducting base-line studies upon which one could measure future results, a problem that has been highlighted in subsequent project reviews and evaluation reports.

Norcross also faced the challenge of entering unknown territories, such as environmental rehabilitation and food security, far from the traditional areas of expertise such as health, emergency relief or rescue services. Thus, we had to rely on the advice of outsiders, in this case very much on the assessments of a Norwegian engineering consultants firm with vast experience from water projects. Obviously, water - or the lack of it - was the key to many of the problems in the Sinkat province, and the consultants proposed a number of ingenious, but expensive solutions.

The first phase of the project was characterised by considerable construction programmes: dams, wells, water, diversion schemes, anti erosion measures, etc., involving costly inputs and highly paid expatriates. The "people" participated mainly as hired hands whenever needed. While some of the ideas and interventions in this phase must be characterised as pioneering technically interesting and even pioneering, the cost-benefit ratio was worrisome.

A turning point in the project was an evaluation conducted in 1989, which called for more local involvement and participation. Project activities had to be "much more relevant to the daily occupations of the target group" which could "not happen without an in-depth understanding of the socio-economic system and cultural context of Hadendowa life". More field studies were needed, and more emphasis had to be put on training the local staff in other than purely technical subjects. It should be pointed out that all but one or two of them were Hadendowa from the Red Sea Hills.

The first recommendation above was partly followed up by entering into a closer collaboration with the Red Sea Area Programme (RESAP), a research programme run jointly by the University of Bergen in Norway and the University of Khartoum and which was also financed by SSE funds from Norway. Curiously, or perhaps symptomatically, these two Sudanese/Norwegian projects had bee running parallel with only minimal contacts.

The second recommendation was pursued by a series of courses, especially in management and accounting for the senior staff, and the project's auditor was hired in to do a revise the whole management structure and accounting system of the project.

At the same time, partly by design and partly by accident, Norcross gradually withdrew its expatriate staff. The local management staff, headed by a local co-manager, had to be in charge for much of the time. By 1990, the Norwegian co-manager was based in Oslo and travelled to Sinkat only on a quarterly basis, before the whole became locally managed a year later. This forced the local management to take real responsibility over the project, something it tackled very well.

The change in orientation of the project and the gradual shift of responsibilities from Oslo to Sinkat no doubt increased local involvement both of the Local Council, the local SRC branches and not the least the beneficiaries themselves. As Sudan was sinking deeper into crises due to the war in the South and a shattered economy, JPS became a sort of island of stability that the local population felt it could always rely on. When a new drought triggered yet another relief operation in the area in the early 1990s, the JPS acted as the logistics base and its staff was the able executors of different relief tasks.

Meanwhile, the local pastoralists and farmers turned more and more towards the JPS for technical and material assistance for activities they themselves initiated and carried forward. This occurred in fields as diverse as water harvesting, tree planting, contour lining, vegetable gardening, erosion control and rehabilitation or income generating activities. The participation process that had been by-passed in the planning stages was now emerging in the implementation phase. The project was contributing to a high degree of awareness among the beneficiaries that had been lacking initially, and the results were both visible and impressive.

For instance, this symbiosis between the project management, local authorities and not the least the beneficiaries themselves in working retaining valuable soil from being washed away, led one independent and usually very critical observer to describe the soil erosion programme as "probably the most successful programme not only as a project activity within the Red Sea area but also as an environmental conservation measure in the whole of Sudan".

Some of the smaller and less spectacular elements of the project had tremendous socio-economic impact. The horticulture programme eventually encouraged an increasing proportion of the pastoralists to keep small irrigated vegetable garden near the wells, many of them rehabilitated by the project. This amounted almost to a cultural revolution as most of the new horticulturists had grown up never even tasting products like okra or cucumbers. Now they were growing these and other vegetables, eating them and selling some of them to obtain a little bit of extra cash for a household economy which is otherwise very close to a pure subsistence economy.

Less obvious, but nevertheless significant, are the achievements of the project in relation to gender relations through small and very low-cost interventions. Even when using a conservative, Muslim society as reference point, the traditional position of rural Beja women must be described as extremely subdued. While there is still much to be done in this domain, the JPS has nevertheless contributed to both educational and income opportunities of women, as well as their active participation in various project activity. A Sudanese expert on gender, who was hired by the project to do a survey in 1993, found that 58,5 % of the women declared to be "ready to participate in any programme which could be implemented (…) a surprisingly high percentage".

In the course of the 1990's, the project has definitely achieved self-reliance in terms of management and administration and also to a large extent technical self-reliance with occasional inputs from Sudanese technical consultants. Major decisions regarding the project are made by the Project Management Committee, where beneficiaries, local authorities and SRC volunteers are represented.

On the financial side, great efforts have been made over the last few years to secure local income, partly through "co-sponsoring" certain projects, on a 50/50 basis, between the JPS and the Sinkat Council and through income generating activities of the project itself. Nevertheless, JPS is still dependent and will continue to depend on contributions form Norcross. These, however, have been quite modest over the last few years, decreasing from about USD 150,000 to less than USD 100,000 - for all project costs, salaries and administration included. This in sharp contrast to the average expenditure of about USD 800.000 a year in the 1980s.

The perhaps most immediate lesson that the Sinkat project provided its initiator, Norcross, is that an aid organisation needs to be very cautious when entering a field where it has limited or no professional expertise. Nevertheless, JPS has been a most valuable experience for Norcross, an experience that can be used with advantage when planning development projects in other fields as well and which can provide some guidance for other organisations, too.

Some of the lessons are fairly "classical" and obvious in today's context, e.g. good assessments and baseline survey have to be undertaken before planning any activities; beneficiaries have to be consulted at all stages; local personnel has to be trained and prepared for the eventual handing-over; development projects take time and have to be seen in a long-term perspective, not the least in regards to funding; etc.

Other lessons from the JPS are more specific to this project and less evident at first sight. As pointed out in the latest evaluation (1996), a successful development project implies a process, a process that at times may turn out to deviate significantly from initial plans. In the case of Sinkat, this process was allowed to take place, partly intentionally and partly by chance, as indicated earlier.

Intended or unintended, flexibility has been a very important factor at the base of this process in JPS. Another element of great significance has been the building up of a strong and interested local management team, both in terms of the paid project staff and in terms of the volunteers which are part of the Management Committee. Perhaps the strong Red Cross traditions based on voluntary service have helped accept that non-experts ready to contribute their time and efforts for free have an important role to play. The fact that the project staffs are from the Red Sea Area themselves has generated a strong commitment on their part to the cause of the project and perhaps also a sense of ownership.

All this has led to a gradual empowering process among the local Hadendowa agro-pastoralists who, of course, have the ultimate say in the project. As expressed in the 1996 evaluation report, "the extent of commitment of the people involved, the process of involving local staff and the level of competence of this staff, the emerging links with local government in stead of by-passing it, and the involvement of Sudanese resource persons, all point in the right direction".

Finally, and this may be the perhaps most thought provoking lesson, money is not and has never been a major issue. JPS has achieved and continues to achieve important results on a very modest budget. The overall positive impact is in fact higher today than eight or ten years ago when the budget was, in real terms, more than 10 times as high.