restructuring the projects or seeking supplemental funds. Many of the projects include labor-intensive components and measures to involve private sector participation. But project design has not adequately allowed for the evolving conditions on the ground and shifts in government priorities. This has led to delays across the board in facilitating pro-poor growth. The objectives are uniformly of high relevance across a broad spectrum of interventions. However, resource constraints have delayed – and limited the level of – the engagement in agriculture, health and education. In addition, a greater focus on achieving pro-poor results would have been desirable with regard to forestry and mining. The support for the investment climate should have been more strategic and addressed systemic issues such as land tenure and growth strategy. These two issues were extensively analyzed and discussed in the few socio-political studies commissioned during the review period (World Bank 2005, 2010). The findings of these studies also informed some of the projects, but were not adequately reflected in the strategic approach. Among the cross-cutting themes —capacity-building, gender equality and environmental sustainability— the objectives are largely relevant, although the support for gender is narrowly confined to economic empowerment. In the design, a strategic vision is needed in most cases to guide the mainstreaming of the themes into sector programs. Relevance of the program. Although the evaluation is in broad agreement with this approach, there are two significant areas that appear to have received inadequate attention. One is a long-term program to systematically capture natural resource rents and convert them to service delivery. The second is a concerted effort to tackle unemployment or under-employment, especially among young people. An analysis of Liberia’s history gives ample evidence of the role that rents derived from control of its natural resources has played in bringing about inequality and political instability. In the long run, it is essential that Liberia develops a system of natural resource management that ensures equitable distribution of the benefits. An example of such a system is the integrated framework of “value chain” in natural resource management, which has been found constructive in Bank assistance to many resource-based economies, including Ghana, Laos and Mongolia (Barma and others 2011). Box 8.1 shows a simplified and condensed version of this approach. A second area that calls for more attention is employment. The Bank analyzed employment during the evaluation period, and found that it was much lower than had been previously thought. Underemployment and unpaid or low-paid informal employment are estimated to constitute between 20 and 30 percent of the total employment rate. However, almost all those who work outside the small formal sector earn incomes that fall below the poverty line. The problem is particularly serious for youth. In Monrovia, for example, much of the employment consists of pushing small wheelbarrows in the market or selling a few items on the roadside. The capacity to steadily expand employment
Overall Assessment
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