Resilience in Ethiopia and Somaliliand
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EVALUATION: NOVEMBER 2015 PUBLICATION: JUNE 2017 RESILIENCE IN ETHIOPIA AND SOMALILAND Impact evaluation of the reconstruction project ‘Development of Enabling Conditions for Pastoralist and Agro-Pastoralist Communities’ Effectiveness Review Series 2015/16 Photo credit: Amal Nagib/Oxfam. Women’s groups are trained on livelihood diversification, such as this tie and dye skills training in Wado makahil community,Somaliland, aimed at women producing and marketing their own garments. JONATHAN LAIN OXFAM GB www.oxfam.org.uk/effectiveness ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to thank the staff of the partner organisations and of Oxfam in Ethiopia and Somaliland for their support in carrying out this Effectiveness Review. Particular thanks are due to Mohammed Ahmed Hussein, Million Ali and Muktar Hassan. Thanks are also due to Ahmed Abdirahman and Abdulahi Haji, for their excellent leadership of the survey process. Additionally, we are grateful to Kristen McCollum and Emily Tomkys for their support during the data collection. Finally, we thank Rob Fuller for his vital comments on earlier drafts of this report. Resilience in Ethiopia and Somaliland: Impact evaluation of the reconstruction project ‘Development of Enabling Conditions for Pastoralist and Agro-Pastoralist Communities’ Effectiveness Review Series 2015–16 2 CONTENTS Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... 2 Executive Summary .................................................................................................... 4 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 11 2 Project Description ................................................................................................ 13 3 Evaluation design .................................................................................................. 17 4 Data ......................................................................................................................... 19 4.1 Respondents interviewed .............................................................................. 19 4.2 Analysis .......................................................................................................... 22 5 Measuring Resilience in Ethiopia and Somaliland .............................................. 24 6 Results .................................................................................................................... 29 6.1 Introduction .................................................................................................... 29 6.2 Involvement in project activities ................................................................... 30 6.3 Livestock ........................................................................................................ 35 6.4 Crops .............................................................................................................. 39 6.5 Non-Farm Activities ....................................................................................... 41 6.6 Responses to Drought ................................................................................... 43 6.7 Wealth ............................................................................................................. 44 6.8 Indicators of Resilience ................................................................................. 45 6.8.1 Dimension 1: Livelihood viability .................................................................... 48 6.8.2 Dimension 2: Innovation potential .................................................................. 49 6.8.3 Dimension 3: Access to contingency resources and support ...................... 50 6.8.4 Dimension 4: Integrity of the natural and built environment ........................ 52 6.8.5 Dimension 5: Social and institutional capability ........................................... 53 7 Conclusions ........................................................................................................... 56 7.1 Conclusions ........................................................................................................ 56 7.2 Programme learning considerations ................................................................. 57 Appendix 1: Thresholds for characteristics of resilience ...................................... 59 Appendix 2: Baseline Statistics before matching................................................... 63 Appendix 3: Methodology used for propensity score matching ........................... 65 Appendix 4: Robustness checks ............................................................................. 69 Appendix 5: Subgroup Analysis .............................................................................. 85 Appendix 6: Weighting Exercise .............................................................................. 89 Bibliography .............................................................................................................. 90 Notes ......................................................................................................................... 91 Resilience in Ethiopia and Somaliland: Impact evaluation of the reconstruction project ‘Development of Enabling Conditions for Pastoralist and Agro-Pastoralist Communities’ Effectiveness Review Series 2015–16 3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Oxfam GB’s Global Performance Framework is part of the organisation’s effort to better understand and communicate its effectiveness, as well as enhance learning across the organisation. Under this Framework, a small number of completed or mature projects are selected at random each year for an evaluation of their impact, known as an ‘Effectiveness Review’. One key focus is on the extent they have promoted change in relation to relevant Oxfam GB global outcome indicators. During the 2015/16 financial year, one of the projects that was randomly selected for an Effectiveness Review was the Reconstruction Project: ‘Contributing to the Development of Enabling Conditions for Human Security for Vulnerable Pastoralist and Agro-Pastoralist Communities’. Oxfam carried out this project in partnership with several organisations, including Ogden Welfare and Development Association (OWDA), Community Development Service Association (CDSA), Somaliland Pastoral Forum (SOLPAF), Candlelight, Himilo Relief and Development Association (HIRDA), and The Horn of Africa Voluntary Youth Committee (HAVOYOCO). The project activities, which began in July 2012 and finished in June 2016, were focused in the Somali region of Ethiopia and the Galbeed and Togdheer regions of Somaliland (see Figure 1.1). The project was designed to build the resilience of project participants to drought, conflict, and other shocks and stresses, through a series of activities working at different scales. The project worked directly to improve pastoralists’ and agro-pastoralists’ ability to thrive in spite of drought and conflict by rehabilitating sources of water and grazing land and by managing livestock disease. The project also aimed to support alternative income-generating activities among women and the youth by providing training and supporting savings/credit groups. Finally, the project tried to increase the voice and representation of marginalised groups in key decision- making forums. EVALUATION APPROACH This Effectiveness Review used a quasi-experimental evaluation design to assess the impact of the activities among the households whose members directly participated in women’s savings and credit groups that were formed by the project and through which many of the project activities were channelled. This involved comparing those households that participated in the project to a group of comparison households, which were similar to the project participants. The Effectiveness Review can only fully identify household-level effects of the project. Community- level effects are partially identified in the evaluation, but given the potential spillovers of the community-level activities into the comparison group, it is impossible to capture their full impacts. Activities operating at a higher level, including the project’s advocacy work in key decision-making forums, are not included in this evaluation. This Effectiveness Review focused on 10 project villages, across two woredas (districts) of Ethiopia and one region of Somaliland. In these project communities, all households that participated in the women’s credit and savings groups that were formed and supported by the project were targeted for interview. The project participants were identified using beneficiary lists that were maintained by the project partner organisations. For the comparison, 14 villages were identified in woredas/regions that were similar to the project communities in our sample in terms of a number of key characteristics, including the dominant livelihood strategies employed by community members, the distance of the community from main roads, and the distance of the community from the Ethiopia-Somaliland border. Within the comparison communities, households were identified using exactly the same protocol that was used to establish the women’s savings and credit groups in the first place, namely through focus groups conducted with the village elders that sought out households that were poor, female-headed, and had demonstrated the potential to establish a non-farm household business. At the analysis stage, the statistical tools of propensity-score