<p>The researcher has been working for CIAT, as a community development facilitator and research assistant for past five years (2001-2006). CIAT has been involved in testing tools and methods for promoting participation and tracking changes at community level under different pilot projects in Eastern and Central Africa in partnership with national research organizations of respective countries. One of CIAT&rsquo / s areas of research is developing participatory monitoring and evaluation systems that are appropriate for rural communities. The researcher has been involved in designing and setting up community-driven participatory monitoring and evaluation systems on a pilot basis with communities in Eastern and Southern Africa.</p>

The Gikongoro Agricultural Development Project (GADP) was implemented in Gikongoro in 1990 and terminated in 2001. It covered 83,508 ha with 250,000 habitants and had a target group of 42,000 farm families, with an estimated total budget of U$ 31.2 million. Its objectives focused on land development, increase of farm crops, environmental conservation and protection, stores and roads construction and bank loans for small farmers. Its expected impacts included the increase of incomes, enhancement of nutritional status and the resolution of the employment problem. The project was closed without achieving these goals. On the basis of this situation, the following research questions were raised: • How and to what degree did inadequate processes of management and evaluation contribute to the GADP failure? • How and to what degree did external environmental events prevent the GADP from achieving its objectives? • How was the participatory development approach used by the GADP in the process of learning? • What were the main causes that led the GADP to fail? • What could be done and what lessons could be drawn from this experience for the benefit of ongoing and future projects operating in Rwanda? The answer to these questions required a review of literature regarding project management and evaluation principles and organizational environment. The methods used for data collection included documentation, systems thinking, observation and interviews. Thematic analysis and systems thinking were used for data analysis. The findings located the reasons for GADP failure in different problem areas. The civil war of October 1990 and the genocide of April 1994, and frequent droughts, swept away the GADP resources. The GADP failed to identify the real needs of the beneficiaries (farmers), coordinate its stakeholders’ activities, and cooperate and communicate adequately with them. This resulted in delays and budget overruns. The failure to bring together management and evaluation caused the project to be ineffective and inefficient in its management of resources. The GADP closed having made no significant positive impacts on the farmers, especially women. To prevent future potential failures, it is recommended to introduce systems thinking in Rwandan higher education programs and to develop strong partnerships between public and private role players. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2011.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.Dev.Studies)-University of Natal, Durban, 2000.

South Africa is a country poorly endowed with natural forests, which account for less than 1% of the total land area. Due to the increase in the demand for forest products in the 1970's and 1980's, which could not be met by the natural forests , the two South African pulp and paper giants, Sappi and Mondi, started the Project Grow and Khulanathi schemes respectively. One of their objectives was to encourage rural communities, through financial assistance, to plant trees on their farms for sale to the forestry companies. Planting of trees by farmers on their own land for their economic, social and environmental (reafforestation) benefits is called social forestry . Social forestry should bring economic activity, capacity building and community empowerment. The benefits from social forestry are two dimensional. The growers benefit from the financial assistance and the readily available market provided by the company, while the company satisfies its demand for timber (pulpwood). The primary objective of this study is therefore to identify factors that influence the choice of trees as a land use in communal areas, and to recommend ways of improving benefits accruing to the growers in particular and the community in general. The factors were determined through structured face to face interviews consisting' of both closed and open-ended questions. The results of the study show that the major motivating factor in tree planting is the perceived financial benefits while lack of land is the major limiting factor. Even though tree planting contributes to social upliftment , it was found that there is 'insufficient capacity building, community empowerment and environmental awareness among growers. Cooperatives are recommended as institutions that will enhance growers' participation in tree planting and maximise the grower benefits from trees . As institutions, cooperatives will be better placed to access relevant information in areas such as marketing and have more bargaining power than individual growers. It is further recommended that the afforestation permit system should be reformulated to include permits for communally owned areas. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1997.

Development projects are increasingly becoming tools to support developing countries to overcome their systemic barriers to development. International and bilateral development agencies channel billions of dollars in such projects or programs every year in hope to boost local development, but until now after decades of efforts and social investments no concrete development in those countries status have been spotlighted as a consequence of these. Rwanda as a small land locked developing Country in the heart of Africa has been allocated amount of grants and supports for many years and have been benefiting from an overwhelming international attention after the genocide of 1994 and one can wonder if these development programmes and projects have been of significant usefulness to the recipients. In such a move, this dissertation aims at systematically evaluating project outcomes through assessment of beneficiaries’ expectations grasped through a case study namely the Decentralization and Community Development Project (DCD) in Rwanda. It is also intended to provide a clear idea of what the project has achieved so far and what beneficiaries’ expectations were not met. In order to achieve research objectives, a systematic research method have been followed. It is therefore, important to recall that evaluation approaches as supported by Khandker and al. (2009), have evolved significantly, making difficult for an evaluator to choose the model or approach which is particular for a specific context suggesting that there is no universal and unique evaluation approach. In this research they were no move from this statement. Actually it was found worthy the use of a mixture of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies to capture the real outcomes of the project. In fact using qualitative methods helped to understand the key players who would have influenced the project implementation and by using quantitative methods and recording the recipients’ aspirations and the effective outcomes from the project. We hypothetically assumed that DCDP did not provide enough outcomes as expected by recipients and in order to prove that, collected data from a random sample of 96 people out of a population of 256334 and 80 answers were collected back. Several unstructured interviews were conducted with project key players comprised of the project team, the local government, and the government officials in charge of the project as well as the World Bank Country Office. Excel were used to analyse collected data so as to allow a better analysis and interpretation of the data. As stated in the main argument, assumption were made that the project did not meet the stakeholder’s expectations but some salient findings of the study proved this to be wrong. In fact, more than 80% people in the project area recognised the project outcomes significance to their lives. Furthermore, the result shows that the project had an important impact on the community. For instance, the DCD project improved considerably the life conditions of the population of the district’s population; as an example, the recipients acknowledged at 100% that the DCD project increased both the employment and the revenue in the district of HUYE. This have a huge meaning, because it is ascertaining the hypothesis that DCD project participated in improving life conditions of the population, while giving a whole meaning to the project in the eyes of all the stakeholders. The main recommendation of the study was about the usefulness on involving the recipients (beneficiaries) in all the project process, including pre-identification so that the project may tackle the real problems of the beneficiaries. / Thesis (M.Com.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2009.

Poverty is a severe problem which deserves global attention. Despite the efforts of the international society and the commitments enshrined in the Millennium Declaration around two billion people are poor in today’s world. The key lies in the collaboration and building of partnerships in order to better tackle this worldwide problem. This study focuses particularly on the EU-UNIDO partnership and is aimed at evaluating its work towards eradicating poverty. For this purpose, fact sheets and charts from various secondary sources have been analysed. Moreover, the author has carried out a qualitative analysis of two EU-UNIDO projects according to a particular evaluation scheme. The study is of importance since the suggestions as to improvement of the EU-UNIDO partnership arising from it can help tackle the global poverty problem more effectively.There is a widespread view that most of the world’s extremely poor live in the Low Income countries (LICs) of Africa. However, a recent study suggests that bulk of the world’s poor actually live in Middle Income Countries (MICs), mostly in Asia. For the purpose of the analysis the following questions are addressed. Firstly, the study seeks to find out what instruments the EU-UNIDO partnership uses to tackle the problem of poverty and whether they are successful. Secondly, it investigates if and to what extent the EU-UNIDO partnership takes into account the change in the global distribution of the poor. The results indicate that in order to fight poverty the EU-UNIDO projects mostly seek to boost economic growth and develop trade capacity. However, the project area of action is not always pro-poor. Moreover, geographical distribution of the EU-UNIDO projects does not run in accordance with the global poverty distribution.

Darbo tikslas yra pateikti ir ištirti e-vyriausybės projektų kūrimo modelį, grindžiamą virtualių komandų kūrimu ir bendradarbiavimu virtualioje erdvėje. Siekiant šio tikslo atliekami uždaviniai: 1.Pateikti ir išanalizuoti e – vyriausybės projektų sampratą bei galimus elektroninės vyriausybės paslaugų kūrimo modelius. 2.Išanalizuoti realių projektų patirtis. 3.Ištirti virtualių komandų kolaboravimo procesus. 4.Pasiūlyti e-vyriausybės projektų kūrimo modelį, kuris padėtų panaudoti informacinių technologijų galimybes, įvairių sričių specialistų bei institucijų kompetencijas ir išteklius, kad būtų sukurtos ir efektyviai tiekiamos e-valdžios paslaugos. 5.Eksperimentiškai patikrinti šio modelio funkcionavimo ypatumus, panaudojant virtualių bendradarbiavimo projektų duomenis. Darbe yra sprendžiama mokslinė problema – koks modelis sudarytų galimybes efektyviai išspręsti elektroninės valdžios projektų kūrimo problemas. Darbo objektas – elektroninės vyriausybės projektai. Darbą sudaro įvadas, trys pagrindinės dalys ir išvados. Šio darbo rezultatai galės būti panaudoti realizuojant virtualaus bendradarbiavimo komandų metodą IT projektams kurti ir realizuoti, kuriant e-vyriausybės paslaugas. Darbą sudaro 67 puslapiai, 18 lentelių ir 28 paveikslėliai. Priede pateikiamas autorės rašytas ir publikuotas straipsnis. / The main purpose of this article is to present and research e – government project creation model, which is based on virtual team creation and communication in virtual space. The tasks of this article is to present e – government project definition and also to analyze projects experience, to research virtual teams collaboration processes, and to check by experiments offered model functional peculiarity, using virtual collaboration project information. The article is written based on analyzing research method – all the literature was analyzed and important information was systematized. Also process modeling method was used for process description and abstract method for final conclusions. It was two real virtual projects analyzed in this article, qualitative and quantitative analyses were made for both projects and structure models were drawn for them either. Functional possibilities of suggested model were summarized. There is offered e - government project creation model based on various competence specialist teams’ virtual collaboration using virtual collaboration tools. It is summarized real projects experience in the article using e – government creation six levels model and also the components of these projects. The article consists of 67 pages, 18 tables and 28 pictures.

This was a study of the problems of community involvement in the Integrated Development Planning process in the Ditsobotla Local Municipality. These problems affects the manner in which the community participation should be done in the process. This exercise is the fulfilment of the provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 and Municipal Systems Act which emphases community participation in the IDP process. It was found that though surveyed legislation emphasized community participation in the study area, in Ditsobotla Local Municipality this was a problem. This was due to the fact that Ditsobotla Local Municipality had a vast area consisting of urban and rural areas, as well as a diversity of races and cultures. For example, it was easy to convene mass meeting in the black communities but difficult to get similar response among the white or Asian communities. Interaction was through the media, or written messages. The following are recommendations derived from the findings: That public participation should encompass a sense that the public's contribution will influence the final outcome. That the public participation process must reflect the interests of and meet the needs of participants. The participation process should facilitate the involvement of those potentially affected. Consideration should be given to how unorganized communities or interest groups could be brought together as participants. That participants should be involved in defining the manner in which they wish to participate. Participants should be provided with the information they need to make their contribution meaningful. / Thesis (MBA) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2002

School is an important institution charged with the task of contributing to the economic, cultural and social development of the community, and of nurturing democratic citizens. Countless state-sponsored measures have therefore been initiated in order to affect the quality of schooling. One example is a state-financed school development project, which is the focus of this thesis. The overall purpose of the study was to improve awareness of whether, and if so how, using projects as a strategy for improving school contributes to sustainable changes, as well as what has been both advantageous and disadvantageous to this end. Two projects were studied with a focus on the participant's perceptions of and experiences from this project. A number of headmasters and educators were interviewed on two occasions, once in connection with the final phases of the projects, and then again three years later. The analysis of the empirical data was guided by The Frame Factor Model (Lundgren, 1994, 1999), and by Hoy and Miskel's (2008) organisational model. In summary, the study shows that the ambitions of both of the school projects were greater than the sustainable results. Moreover, it was clear that the conditions placed upon the school organisation by the outside world constituted both promoted and encumbered the results of the school projects. State funds contributed to the improvement of schools, while at the same time, other state regulations delimited what the sustainable changes were. The desirable changes were also affected by processes within the organisation and can be connected with structures, cultures and individuals. Above all, current structures within the organisation need to be changed so that the employees have an in-depth involvement in a project and for a protracted period of time. Changed structures allow for common expertise and values to be improved with regard to venturing into a project. Furthermore, the various skills of the employees, as well as their attitudes toward projects within the organisation, were also significant to the sustainable changes. One suggestion for continued research is to improve the knowledge on how structures can be changed within a school organisation so as to enable the organisation's employees to be engaged in such a way as to make collective learning possible.

This thesis is the result of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Phalombe District in Malawi, Southern Africa, where I studied agricultural development projects in the village of Kachala. The focus of this investigation is on people's perceptions and ideas of development co-operation and the meanings of development and poverty in general. Perceptions of development and poverty among villagers in Kachala are compared to those of development agents working for development organizations in the area. These perceptions are also compared to the definitions of development and poverty found throughout development literature. This research demonstrates - through examples from Phalombe District and elsewhere - how notions of development are relative, diverse and context-specific, and therefore not static and universally applicable. Finally, participatory development ideals and the structurally unequal donor-recipient relationships, at the core of the current development system, are discussed. This thesis illustrates how the common portrayal of development as an oppressive, disempowering industry, characterized by top-down interventions, does not always apply.