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Poor Places, Thriving People
Rural Development Project financed small-scale projects, principally in rural areas. The projects were identified by local communities in the form of Village Priority Development Plans. Projects were implemented by the deconcentrated offices of sector ministries at governorate and district levels. In the case of Sohag, sector ministries directly supervised construction for projects of less than US$250,000 and delegated the supervision of larger construction works to consultants. The limited level of delegation from Cairo to the program location created some difficulties: each sector ministry followed its own procurement procedures and microcredit applications took a long time to process (World Bank 2008). • A shift toward more deconcentrated identification and implementation. Tunisia’s Office for Forestry and Livestock Development in the northwest (ODESYPANO) was created in 1981, with funding from the European Union, the World Bank, Germany, and the Food and Agriculture Organization. It covered five governorates and its basic approach was to convert scrubland into permanent grazing through the provision of forest protection, livestock breeding, and rural tracks. In its first phase (1981–89), the Ministry of Agriculture initiated and delivered these services directly through its dedicated ODESYPANO office. By 1989, however, it was clear that a lack of community ownership was lowering the project’s impacts: projects were unnecessarily costly, the new rangelands were being overgrazed, and the new roads were not being well maintained. ODESYPANO, therefore, invested five years (1989–94) in building communities’ capacity to plan and implement investments. The community-led approach—in place since 1994—has brought about lower contract prices and has improved the sustainability of investments. The challenge now is that communities’ local development plans call for investments beyond the mandate of the Ministry of Agriculture. ODESYPANO is, therefore, signing protocols with each governor, whereby the Délégué (subgovernor) will convene the deconcentrated officials of other sector ministries, along with local NGOs, to implement community development plans. In the design of area-based programs, therefore, there is a trade-off between the implementation capacity of sector ministries—especially where large investments are concerned—and the need for local ownership. In countries such as Brazil and Spain, regional governments serve as a bridge between the center and local administrations, providing a combination of local ownership and critical institutional mass. A common theme is that long-term investment in local capacity creates the foundation for successful area-based programs.