SIERRA LEONE maq 4ª.indd - agrilife - Europa

6 Survey Results
146
In general we can say that in several aspects of
food security there was some kind of improvement
perceived by majority of the households,
especially, concerning the cultivated area and
improvement in food production in both regions
and access to markets in the Eastern region, which
were specifically targeted by the STABEX program.
6.4.4 Sustainability
Sustainability can only be evaluated several
years after implementation of the STABEX projects.
Consequently, in the Sierra Leone survey only
expected future sustainability could be asked
for the different components of the projects.
The following question was posed: “Could you
continue to apply the proposals of the interventions
(specified below) after the end of the project
implementation period?”. The interventions were
defined as follows (same categories as for the
relevance assessment of the support described in
section 6.4.1): provision of market information,
training in business management, training in
processing, training in marketing, training in
agronomic activities, processing equipment,
tools, storage facilities, drying facilities, seeds,
pesticides and insecticides, fertilizers, capital
(micro-credit).
Results are separately summarised in Figure
99 and Figure 100 for the Eastern region and for
the Northern region.
In both regions most of the respondents who
have received some kind of support stated that
those will serve for their long term benefit. Only a
few smallholders were stating the opposite or that
they were not aware of the sustainability impact
of the initiative they have received. In the Eastern
region, almost all the activities are perceived
to be sustainable, except drying and storage
facilities, where some smallholders perceived it
as unsustainable. Northern region respondents’
largely coincided with Eastern region respondents
except for three issues i) training and information
related components and ii) processing equipment
and iii) drying and storage facilities. Concerning
the first two activities, Northern smallholders
believe much less than Eastern ones that these
activities would be sustainable in their area,
while a more positive outlook was associated to
the third aspect.
After having analyzed relevance,
effectiveness, impact and sustainability of
STABEX-funded projects (and to a minor extent
also of MAFFS and NGO’s projects) in the
Figure 99. Expected sustainability of different components of the projects in the Eastern region of Sierra Leone