integrated agricultural development projects in sierra leone—some implications for the future...

Agricultural Administration 18 (1985) 65-79

Integrated Agricultural Development Projects in Sierra Leone-Some Implications for the Future

Administration of Agricultural Development

John Cusworth

Project Planning Centre for Developing Countries, University of Bradford, Bradford, West Yorkshire, Great Britain

(Received: 14 December, 1983)

SUMMARY

This paper reviews the Integrated Agricultural Development Project (IADP)programme in Sierra Leonefrom the early 1970s to thepresent. It outlines the reasonsfor initiating a series of near autonomous projects under the Ministry of Natural Resources which were ultimately to cover approximately 80 y0 of the area of the country. It also explains some of the effects the projects had on the rest of the Ministry and their implications on the programme itself and for the longer term organisation of the Ministry and agricultural development in general. Much of the paper’s content is spect$c to the circumstances of Sierra Leone, but it will be of wider interest to all those involved with establishing projects and concerned with the organisation and administration of agricultural development programmes.

INTRODUCTION

Prior to the beginning of the Integrated Agricultural Development Project (IADP) programme in 1972, responsibility for the administration of agricultural development in Sierra Leone, except for research and education, lay mainly with the Division of Agriculture, the largest of the four professional line departments of the then Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources (MANR). In 1978, the MANR was split into two to form the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) and the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) which included the other two divisions of

65 Agricultural Administration 0309-586X/85/$03.30 0 Elsevier Applied Science Publishers Ltd, England, 1985. Printed in Great Britain

66 John Cusworth

Livestock and Fisheries. The Division of Agriculture was, and is still, by far the largest division within either Ministry, and it is charged with providing a range of services to farmers in order to assist with the promotion of agricultural development. The Ministry, prior to 1972, had the basic structure shown in Fig. 1.

Given such a structure, the role of the professional Head of the Division of Agriculture, i.e. the Chief Agriculturist, stands out as being of primary importance with regard to the professional functions of the Ministry.

During the late 1960s the MANR was facing a number of difficulties with respect to its field operations. Much of the development work had been associated with the provision of a heavily subsidised mechanical cultivation service for small farmers around which much of the extension work was based, but the adequate maintenance and supervision of tractors and equipment proved beyond the capacity of the Ministry and the service had a limited impact.2,7 In addition, following the collapse of the Agricultural Loans and Credit Scheme in 1967, relatively little use was being made of modern farm inputs by farmers.6 But part of the reason for the failure of the schemes and the limited impact which the Ministry was

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I Chief

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Deplty Chief Agriculturist

t I 1 Publicity Training Workshops Extension Produce

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Fig. 1. The basic MANR structure, pre-1972.

Agricultural projects and development administration in Sierra Leone 61

having on development stemmed from its administrative inefficiency, caused by extended lines of communication, a shortage of adequately trained personnel, a centralised bureaucracy and a lack of target-oriented development policy. Such were the limitations of the Ministry that major external funding agencies doubted the capacity of the Ministry to effectively make use of additional resources. Therefore, in order to attempt to improve the field operations of the Ministry, it was proposed, in the early 1970s to establish an integrated agricultural development project in the southeastern area of the country, which was to come under the auspices of the MANR but which would, to a considerable extent, remain autonomous from it.

THE IADP PROGRAMME

The first IADP, the Eastern Area Project (EAP) became credit effective in 1972; it was funded jointly by the Sierra Leone Government (GOSL) (Leo.77 million) and the International Development Agency of the World Bank (US$4.3 million). The project was relatively limited in its size but had firm development targets to establish both estate and smallholder oil palm, smallholder cocoa and the development of 6000 acres of inland valley swamp for rice production. The main project outputs were to be the establishment of a Project Management Unit, an oil palm processing mill and a supervised credit and extension service. The word ‘integration’ is open to a number of interpretations but, in this case, it was limited to the provision of a comprehensive agricultural package to the farmer under a locally based management unit. The project was not an integrated rural development project crossing boundaries or establishing linkages with other Ministries and institutions, and its civil works component, in the form of a feeder road building programme, was a separate development (funded and executed by the US-based CARE organisation during Phase 2 of the project).

The project proved to be very effective in terms of target achievement, as Table 1 suggests, although recent assessments indicate some abandonment of developed swamps, and the development loan recovery rate has been a cause for concern. Nevertheless, the initial success of the EAP, particularly in comparison with the previous achievements of the Ministry, signalled the beginning of an ambitious IADP programme that was ultimately to cover most of the area of the country.

68 John Cusworth

TABLE 1 The Eastern Area Project-Targets and Achievement

(1972-1975)

Crop Unit Target Achievement

Swamp rice Acres 6 000 7 137 Cocoa Acres 750 770 Oil palm-state Acres 510 532

-0utgrower Acres 1830 1934 Project HQ 1 1

Source: Evaluation Bulletin No. 3, PEMSU, MAF, June, 1982.

The next IADP to follow EAP-1 was an extended project in the east, referred to as EAP-2, and a similarly organised scheme in the north, the Northern Area Project (NAP); both projects were supported with external funding from the IDA and began in 1976. The fourth project, the Koinadugu IADP, based in the far north of the country, was the first to be supported with EEC funds in 1978. Subsequent projects were the Magbosi IADP in 1980 with support from IFAD, the Moyamba IADP in 1980, supported by African Development Bank funds, and the North Western IADP and Bo-Pujehun projects, begun in 1981, supported with funds and technical assistance from the EEC and the West German Government, respectively (Fig. 2). As will be discussed later, however, not all the projects were established organisationally in the same way as the EAP-1.

IAD P ORGANISATION

Projects and the Ministry

In terms of organisational structure, the EAP and most subsequent projects followed a typical hierarchical form with a Project Management Unit headed by a Project Manager with a small number of functional line departments serviced by an administrative and accounting secretariat (Fig. 3).

The main point of interest relevant to this paper is the role of the Division of Agriculture in the management of the project, and the

NIADP-2 -

NWIADP-1

LIBERIA


tlantic Ocean

Fig. 2. IAD Programme: expected status, January, 1983. Source: Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (Planning, Evaluation and Services Unit). EIADP-3 and Central Support Services (Integrated Agricultural Development Project Eastern Region-Phase 3). Freetown, November, 1979, p. 50. Key: EIADP-3, Eastern Region; KJADP-1, Koinadugu; N IAD P-2, Northern Area; N WIADP- 1, North Western;

MBIADP-1, Magbosi; MYIADP-1, Moyamba; BjPIADP-I, BO/Pujehun.

relationship between the Project Manager and the Ministry Headquarters. Unlike with previous development projects and programmes undertaken by MANK, the Project Manager of EAP-1 reported to the Permanent Secretary (PS) of the Ministry directly, rather than through the Chief Agriculturist. The latter’s direct involvement with the project was confined to a representation on the Project Advisory

70 John Cusworth

SECRETARY

DIVISION il OF AGRICULTURE

Field Administration Finance Commercial Operations and Personnel Services

Fig. 3. EAP-1 outline organisation structure. Source: Integrated Agricultural Development Project II, IBRD Appraisal Report, April, 1975.

Committee (PAC), but whilst the PAC ought, in theory, to have had control and influence over the project, in practice it exerted little real authority, most of which lay firmly with the Project Manager and the Permanent Secretary. The authority of the Project Manager tended to be further enhanced by frequent contact with, and support from, representatives of the funding agency. This arrangement undoubtedly led to a relatively high level of administrative efficiency within the project due to shortened lines of communication, improved bureaucratic procedures and a clearly focused target-orientated work programme, which all helped to ensure that the project’s outputs were delivered.

Following the initial success of the project format and the launching of subsequent projects, a further important development took place within the Ministry in 1977. This was the establishment within the Ministry Headquarters of a special unit, supported with external funds, to assist in the financial control and evaluation of the projects and to provide them with commercial services. The new unit, initially called the Project Evaluation and Service Unit (PESU), was expanded in 1979 to form the Project Planning Evaluation and Monitoring Service Unit (PEMSU) following its absorption of the Ministry’s own Planning Unit that had originally been established with British technical assistance but which had proved largely ineffective through its chronic lack of personnel and financial resources. The establishment of the new unit to deal with a broad range of project-related issues within the Ministry further loosened the


control at headquarters level between the Division of Agriculture and the IADPs, the relationship between whom is depicted in Fig. 4.

The advent of the IADPs and the organisational relationship between the projects and the Ministry were to have significance in two main areas-Ministry staffing and finance.

Staffing

The dichotomy between the IADPs and the Division of Agriculture under the MANR, now the MAF, is nowhere more clear cut than in the arrangements for the staffing of the projects. Many of the trained personnel working for the projects were drawn from the Ministry’s Division of Agriculture. Some were ‘seconded’ into the projects under contract whereby their Ministry seniority and service status was frozen until they returned; others were ‘assigned’ to the projects whereby their project service was counted towards seniority and length of service. Other project personnel were recruited directly into the projects from outside the ranks of the Ministry but who might reasonably have been able to compare their salary levels and seniority status with an equivalent civil service rank in the Division of Agriculture. The one fact common to all the staff on projects was that they were remunerated at a level that could be estimated at more or less 25 % above that of the equivalent rank in the Division. This ‘topping up’ of salaries was justified by the extra work and responsibilities that project staff could be expected to undertake and in part to compensate for the lack of job security afforded to normal Ministry personnel.

The method of recruitment of project personnel had a number of implications for the morale and structure of the Ministry. One was that, naturally enough, a number of the senior, or recently trained, or more mobile officers competed for the project posts, and the projects were, to some extent, able to handpick the better qualified and experienced individuals. During the early part of the IADP programme this was only of limited importance, but as the number of projects proliferated and the shortage of such staff became more acute, competition in personnel recruitment and leap-frogging from project to project began to become more common. A second major feature of the method of recruitment was the gradual breakdown in the alignment of personnel salary levels and levels of seniority status between the projects and the Ministry.

The distortions in terms of service between projects and the Ministry were exacerbated by the fact that under the method of establishing the

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projects both sets of personnel found themselves operating side by side in the same areas, but not in collaboration. Effectively, the Ministry provided a dual presence in the project areas, one under the externally funded and well-resourced project, the other under the Division of Agriculture. The relationships between the two arms of the Ministry were not always harmonious and it is understandable that the Division of Agriculture personnel found themselves to be somewhat at a disadvan- tage in a number of respects, including personal remuneration and operational effectiveness, compared with their project employed colleagues.

Implications for the Ministry Development Budget

The development budget of Sierra Leone is heavily dependent on the availability of external funding which represented 80 % of the total in the financial year 1981/82.3 During the period from 1972 to date the proportion of development expenditure in the agricultural sector under MANR on the IADP programme has increased considerably as the number of projects being implemented has risen. All the financing plans for the IADPs have been drawn up and negotiated with external funding agencies, resulting in agreements between the GOSL and the various donors. As is normally the circumstance where external funding is available, the local counterpart funding for the projects is included in the agreements and written into the development budget. Such projects normally have first call on the domestic development budgetary resources. In Sierra Leone, as the availability of local development funds became scarcer and the number of IADPs and other externally funded projects increased, so the funds remaining to finance locally identified and supported projects were decreased accordingly. It was these latter projects that the Division of Agriculture proposed and implemented and, with the decline in available funding, the Division’s already minimal field operations were further curtailed. A vicious circle developed wherein the advent of IADPs depleted the capacity of the Agricultural Division to operate effectively which, in itself, supported the need to expand the IADP programme.

CHANGES IN IADP ORGANISATION

As the implications of the IADP programme outlined above became evident in the late 1970s the Ministry and some funding agencies became

74 John Cusworth

increasingly concerned over the programme’s medium to long-term impact on the overall administration of agricultural development. Whilst, in the short term, the Division of Agriculture was gradually being weakened -through a depletion of trained manpower and development finance, it was generally recognised that, in the longer term, following the end of the programme, the project operations would be re-absorbed into the general Ministry structure under the Division. Issues such as how the post-project operations were to be funded, and how the project staff were to be integrated into the Civil Service Ministry structure, began to surface. Concern with these issues lead to attempts to rethink the organisation of new IADPs. During the negotiation over the implementation of the Koinadugu IADP and the planning of the Magbosi project in 1978, proposals were made to the effect that the project would simply absorb all Ministry personnel in the project area, thus solving the problem of staff recruitment and, more optimistically, the need for project staff incentive payments. Effectively, this meant that the IADPs would become vehicles for providing the existing Division of Agriculture operations with increased resources and the essential element of improved administration which, it has been suggested, is the main element in integrated development projects. lo

Unfortunately, from the points of view of the funding agencies and Project Managers, these proposals were actively resisted by the Division of Agriculture. Seen from the latter’s viewpoint, this resistance is understandable, the Division was being asked to hand over authority over its staff and resources to a semi-autonomous PMU that was supported by PEMSU and which reported directly to the Permanent Secretary. Ostensibly, the argument put forward by the Division was that it needed to retain its capacity to carry out its responsibilities with regard to the non-project farmers; quite how this was to be achieved, given the lack of resources, was not very clear, but on a matter of principle the Division was arguing on firm ground. The issue was further complicated by the fact that the project areas were not always consistent with the designated ‘agricultural circles’, and handing over all the resources to the projects would have left some pockets without any effective coverage.

The Division’s arguments prevailed in the KIADP, but in Magbosi it was agreed that the project would absorb the existing divisional staff under the project, although they were still paid a project ‘topping up’ allowance. In 1980-8 1 the lessons of the earlier projects were being well absorbed and, in one of the latest projects to be implemented, the Bo- Pujehun project, an even less disruptive method of project organisation


has been employed. In the latter case the funding agency, the West German Development agency (GTZ), provides funds through a project secretariat to support development initiatives being undertaken by a number of institutions, including the Division of Agriculture, without the need for establishing a separate PMU under the Ministry.

These shifts in the method of establishing the projects reflect the concern over the problems caused by the autonomous projects on the longer term administration of development. However, it was always recognised that at some stage there would need to be some major reorganisation of the Ministry in order to take into account the impact of the projects at the district, provincial and central levels. The projects had been born partly out of the perceived administrative weakness of the Ministry so that, once the projects came to an end, there would be an urgent need to ensure that the improved administrative structures which they had introduced were not lost.

MINISTRY REORGANISATION PROPOSALS

The need for a Ministry reorganisation was perceived during the mid- 1970s and possibly earlier.5 However, specific proposals were only seriously considered in 1979. Initially, the Ministry established an internal committee to examine the administrative problems of the Ministry,* and the role of the projects. This committee ultimately produced a project called Ag-Dev 5 that was to be submitted to the IBRD for funding consideration. Before the completion of Ag-Dev 5, however, the Ministry recruited consultants to study the problem from an independent viewpoint. These consultants reported in August, 1981. Subsequent to both these proposals, the IBRD, jointly with IFAD, carried out an extensive review of the situation during its 1983 agricultural sector review; the draft reorganisation proposals contained in this review have subsequently been considered positively by the Ministry.

Despite differences in the terms of reference of the three groups and in the nature of the proposals submitted, a number of common issues were considered by them:

(a) A review of the manpower needs of the Ministry against a background of the specific tasks, responsibilities and objectives of the Ministry.

(b) A decentralisation of the Ministry based on the current IADP

76 John Cusworth

structures and an integration of the IADPs and the Division of Agriculture.

(c) The role of the Ministry Headquarters in Freetown. (d) The potential merger of MAF with MNR. (e) A complete overhaul of the accounting and administrative

procedures employed by the Ministry.

It is difficult to summarise the various proposals in this short paper, and the latest IBRD proposals of August, 1983, are still at the draft stage. Nevertheless, it is expected that there will be common agreement on a number of issues, including the need, on technical grounds, to merge the two Ministries and to decentralise the resulting Ministry on a regional basis. It is likely that the proposals will involve the establishment of a central Ministry Headquarters that will provide a range of services to the regions, including planning, specialist technical, administrative and commercial service functions, as well as dealing with overall policy and sector planning issues. A key feature over which funding agencies will have concern is the need to preserve the best aspects of the current PMUs in the region and also the opportunity to direct funding straight into the regions without going through a centralised bureaucracy. To enable this to occur, each of the Regional Management Units would need to be established on a self-accounting basis.

Whilst there may be broad agreement on the need and form of Ministry reorganisation, a number of problems will need to be resolved before the proposals become reality. The first is the problem of the integration of project personnel and non-project personnel into the new Regional Management Units. Whilst the Ministry has had to accept the inevitability of this move, it is still not fully clear how it could be achieved. Problems arise over the current status of many project personnel relative to the Division of Agriculture establishment. Reconciling the distorted salary levels is also a thorny issue, although recent increases in Civil Service salaries have gone some way towards diminishing the problem. The degree to which this whole issue of integration is a problem is reflected in the fact that, whilst a condition in the funding agreement between SCG and IDA for EAP-3 in 1980 was full integration between Division and project staff, in the Eastern Project area this had yet to be achieved in mid-1983, although it is understood progress is now being made in this direction.

Another potential istumbling block to Ministry reorganisation, only


indirectly linked to the IADP programme, is the enormous number of unskilled and superfluous manpower retained on the Ministry’s payroll, particularly within the Division of Agriculture. This problem, which has been with the Ministry for over a decade, has, in recent years, reached serious proportions. The reason for the increase in this type of recruitment is found in the severe nature of the recession in Sierra Leone, the resultant shortage of private sector jobs, and the pervasive patronage system that prevails in the country. The proportion of the Ministry’s recurrent budget allocated to unskilled personal emoluments has increased considerably over recent years and stood at over 30 % in the 1982/83 recurrent budget, and almost all the Division of Agriculture’s Development Budget is spent on unproductive daily paid labour. It is difficult to believe that any Ministry reorganisation could be effective unless this problem is first brought under control and resolved.g

A third, and rather less significant, obstacle to integration is the problem of matching project areas to the previously designated ‘agricultural circles’ on which the Division of Agriculture’s administration is based, an issue which is further complicated by the fact that neither the projects nor the circles are compatible with the Government’s Provincial Administrative areas.

CONCLUSIONS

The experience of Sierra Leone in its efforts, over the past decade or so, to improve the administration of agricultural development through the implementation of a series of IADPs raises a number of points of interest for development planners and administrators. Ultimately, the IADP programme will need to be assessed on the basis of the means justifying the end and as to whether or not individual projects and the programme as a whole have proved a worth while use of resources in increasing agricultural productivity, output and rural incomes. It is beyond the scope of this paper to assess this, but, given the current economic trends in Sierra Leone, which include declining agricultural exports and increasing food imports it may be safely concluded that the IADPs have not yet solved the country’s major agricultural problems of falling cash crop production and a limited growth in food production. An explanation as to why such an emphasis has been placed on the IADP Programme may owe as much to the attractions of such projects from various perspectives,

78 John Cusworth

as indicated by writers such as Chambers1 and Strachaqr ’ as to their contribution to the development effort.

The IADP Programme certainly held its attractions for funding agencies and politicians alike in that all the IADPs are high profile, area- based projects with which both groups can be readily associated. Funding agencies tend to be attracted to the larger type of project over which they are able to exert some administrative authority and control over the use of funds. Politicians could hardly be blamed for finding the existence of an IADP in their constituency an absolute necessity once the first few were implemented and everyone was able to justify the need for the near- autonomous project approach against the administrative weakness of the Ministry of Agriculture. However, it may be argued that the emphasis given to the IADP Programme has, to some extent, obscured the need to tackle a number of fundamental issues relating to agricultural development in the country as a whole.

First, the high profile nature of the typical IADP in terms of infrastructural development, local employment opportunities and wide provision of services to farm families has allowed the politicians and administrators to be seen providing vigorous support to agricultural development without the necessity of facing some fundamental policy issues-such as incentive producer pricing for food and export crops and the promotion of a better marketing system for food crops and rice, in particular. It remains purely a matter for conjecture as to how far the projects have effectively acted as substitutes for difficult decision-making.

Secondly, it might be argued that the need to establish IADPs in nearly all areas of the country has necessarily had to relegate overall sector planning to a fringe activity whilst planning resources were concentrated on the projects. This may have led to a misallocation of resources that might better have been committed to other activities, such as agricultural research and education. The area-based projects certainly led to some duplication of effort at the local level that must have resulted in some waste of resources.

Thirdly, the emphasis given to the IADP Programme has allowed the various authorities concerned with agricultural development to postpone seeking a solution to one of the major problems that provided for their initial justification, i.e. the administrative weakness of the Ministry. As has been suggested above, the projects have exacerbated this problem to the point at which the Ministry’s non-project development activities have been virtually eliminated through depletion of the resources and


authority of the Division of Agriculture. The point has been reached, however, where the need to take action in

this latter regard has become urgent. A rare opportunity now exists to implement a total reorganisation of the old Ministry using the IADPs as a platform for a new decentralised administration. This could be designed to serve better the needs of Sierra Leone’s three hundred thousand small farmers who will ultimately determine the future performance of agriculture in the country.

REFERENCES

1. Chambers, R., Project selection for poverty-focussed rural development: Simple is optimal, World Development, 6(2) (197Q 209-19.

2. Gleave, B., Mechanisation of peasant farming, Discussion Paper No. 3, Department of Geography, University of Salford, 1977.

3. Government of Sierra Leone, Development Estimates 1981-82, Government Printing Department, Freetown, 198 1.

4. Government of Sierra Leone, Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure, 1982-83, Government Printing Department, Freetown, 1982.

5. IBRD, Integrated Agricultural Development Project, Phase III, Appraisal Report, Washington, DC, 1975.

6. Karr, G. In African agriculture, economic action and reaction in Sierra Leone (Levi, J. (Ed.)) (Chapter 9). Oxford, Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux, 1976.

7. Levi, J. (Ed.), African agriculture, economic action and reaction in Sierra Leone. Oxford, Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux, 1976.

8. MAF, Preliminary report into the structure of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in relation to agricultural development projects in Sierra Leone, Freetown, August, 1980.

9. MAF, Agricultural Statistics Bulletin, PEMSU, MAF, Freetown, February, 1983.

10. Overseas Development Institute, Briefing Paper No. 4, Integrated Rural Development, London, 1979.

11. Strachan, H. W., Side effects of planning in the bid control system, World Development, 6(4) (April, 1978), 467-76.

integrated agricultural development projects in sierra leone—some implications for the future...

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