Ethiopia SOCODEP CE - main report - IFAD

Institutional Strengthening/Capacity-Building of Project Stakeholders
46. Institutional capacity-building. If institutional capacity-building is generally taken as
including changes to the policy environment, organizational reform, putting in place management
systems, technical and management training, provision of physical resources, and changing of
attitudes, then SOCODEP only partially addressed the matter of capacity-building of Government and
other stakeholder institutions. SOCODEP delivered a great deal of training (see Appendix 2) and
physical resources, to Regional and lower levels of Government, as well as to CBE, OMFI, and SC
personnel and members.
47. Training. In order to strengthen institutional capacity, 23 international and 39 domestic
trainings were delivered to 56,912 trainees from partner bureaux at all levels and SCs executive
committee, staff and members between 1998 and 2005. Eight of the distance learning students from
the Bureau of Finance and Economic Development (BOFED) are still following their MSc study in
Financial Management from UK in 2006, four years after the main project loans were closed.
48. At the time of Appraisal, the profound needs for training and re-orientation were clear: “…
Cooperative Promotion Department (CPD) staff lack practical business promotion, management and
marketing know-how. Their training has been for cooperatives under a socialistic system, which is no
longer relevant in Ethiopia, and major reorientation is required in the context of operations under a
market economy”. Two years later the mid-term review of the project said that: “…the basic
restructuring and the breaking up of the CPD into different teams requires redesigning the training
programme conceived at appraisal. A comprehensive cooperative promotion and training programme
for the next four years is considered to be necessary and urgent. It will replace all training that was
proposed for the remaining four years at appraisal and has been designed to ‘restart from scratch’”.
49. Physical resources. The stakeholder organisations received a good deal of physical equipment 24
including 65 cars (double cabin pick-ups and land cruiser station wagons) and 3 buses, 300
motorbikes, two newly built offices, computers, office furniture, 6-communication radios, and
different types of audiovisual equipment. Road building equipment including: 9 dump trucks, 3
bulldozers, 3 graders, 2 loaders, 2 rollers, many spare parts and other supplies were provided by the
project. But during this evaluation mission, and as has been the case during the Supervision missions,
the destination of some of the project vehicles was impossible to trace. It was also confirmed by the
Supervision missions 25 and during the evaluation mission that vehicles and other equipment were not
always used for the intended purposes.
Setting Up a Veterinary Revolving Drug Fund
50. Veterinary Revolving Drugs Fund (VRDF). The Veterinary RDF was implemented late in the
project, with the first drugs procurement in 2001. Discussions at Woreda level confirmed that the
acquisition of SOCODEP drugs made a significant contribution to the ability of Government
Veterinary personnel to provide treatments, but, as the PCR points out, the procurement process was
initially very cumbersome. Now that the RDF is dwindling, supplies to Woredas are reducing, and the
incidence of animal disease is increasing again.
51. Aim of the component. SOCODEP was not directly concerned with livestock production, but a
considerable amount of credit was provided for work oxen, and to women fattening small ruminants
and cattle. The objective of the VRDF therefore was “to provide limited relief of livestock health
constraints, particularly with respect to draught animals, through provision of veterinary drugs”. This
was intended to improve animal health in the project area, verified by reduced mortality rates and
incidence of diseases. The sub-component was intended to back-up the credit activities associated with
the supply of work oxen and women’s income generating activities involving cattle and sheep
fattening. The project was to finance the importation of a limited supply of veterinary drugs and
24 Information obtained from PCU.
25 eg the 2003 Supervision Report, paragraph 30.
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