The 2016 - 2017 drought in Ethiopia sharply deteriorated the food security situation resulting in about 5.6 million food insecure people as of December 2016 and 8.5 million food insecure people by early August 2017. In the Somali region in December 2017, 1.79 million people were considered in need of food assistance and 2.59 million people were considered in need of non-food assistance.
In order to address the impact of drought in the Somali region and to rebuild the disrupted livelihoods of pastoral, and agro-pastoral communities affected by recurrent drought, UNDP and FAO partnered with the Somali Regional government to jointly implement a project titled “Support to Livelihoods of drought affected households and resilience building of vulnerable groups in Warder and Kebridehar Woredas of Ethiopia Somali Region”. The overall objective of the project was to strengthen the resilience of pastoral and agro-pastoral communities to reduce the impact of droughts and climate risks in Warder and Kebridehar woredas of Ethiopia’s Somali region.
The Terminal Evaluation is an independent review that aims to determine progress made towards the achievement of outcomes; to identify the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency and timeliness of project implementation; to highlight issues requiring decisions and actions; and to present initial lessons learned about project design, implementation and management. The objective of this evaluation is to provide a comprehensive and systematic accounting of performance, and assess project design, implementation, likelihood of sustainability and possible impacts.
Several lessons were learned for future adaptation projects in Ethiopia:
- Project implementation needs to be fully enabled within government systems.
- The woreda management model should have a higher level of engagement and administrative agreement with woreda, regional and zonal authorities.
- Project inception phase should focus on developing a comprehensive implementation strategy (including relevant business models) and monitoring plan.
- Extension and training plans require greater attention and technical guidance.
- Development Agents play a critical role but staff turnover and technical capacity are constraints.
Project management of procurement is time-consuming and detracts from the focus on project results.