ACF International's Response to the West African Sahel Food Crisis

EXTERNAL EVALUATION JANUARY 2013

ACF International’s Response to the West African Sahel Food Crisis 2012

Funded by ACF By John Wiater and Jean le Bloas

This report was commissioned by Action Against Hunger | ACF International. The comments contained herein reflect the opinions of the Evaluators only. Table of Contents Acronyms ...... 3 Acknowledgements ...... 4 Executive Summary ...... 5 Background ...... 8 Evaluation Methodology ...... 9 Findings ...... 9 Overall Emergency Response ...... 9 Timeliness ...... 9 Appropriateness of the Strategy ...... 10 Appropriateness of the Technical Response ...... 12 Scope and Sequence ...... 14 Effectiveness of the Technical Response ...... 21 Monitoring Tools, Feedback Loops and Data Sharing ...... 34 Effectiveness of ACF’s Regional Strategy in Responding to Recurrent Crises ...... 37 Advocacy ...... 38 Integration of Lessons Learned ...... 39 Emergency Response Systems ...... 40 Human Resources ...... 40 Logistics ...... 44 Coordination ...... 45 Communication ...... 46 Administration, Finance and Fundraising ...... 47 Capacity-building within an overall project strategy of sustainability ...... 48 Future Programming Considerations ...... 49

Summary of Key Conclusions ...... 51 Summary of Recommendations ...... 53 Annexes Annex 1: 2012 Sahel Drought Affected Countries ...... 56

Annex 2: Best Practice Reporting Table ...... 57 Annex 3: Rating of Project Achievements In Terms of DAC Criteria ...... 58 Annex 4: Terms of Reference ...... 69 Annex 5: Evaluation Schedule/Itinerary ...... 76 Annex 6: Resource Materials/Bibliography ...... 81 Annex 7: Persons Interviewed ...... 84 Annex 8: Increase in Net Financial Gain to Beneficiaries from Warrant Credit ...... 89 Annex 9: Surge Support Missions Conducted ...... 90 Annex 10: Funding Raised ...... 92

Tables Table 1: ECHO Mitigation CT coverage of total food deficit households ...... 14

Table 2: Cash transfer beneficiary target achievement (ECHO Mitigation) ...... 22

Table 3: Average CT disbursements per household per month by country and project ..... 22-23

Table 4: Nutrition Treatment Achievements for SAM against Sphere Standards ...... 28

Table 5: Health Gardens ...... 31

Acronyms

ACF Action Contre La Faim APR Activity Progress Report BF Blanket Feeding CASEC Conseil d’Administration de Sections Communautaires (Community Administrative Council) CaLP The Cash Learning Project CAP Consolidated Annual Appeal CD Country Director CFW Cash For Work CIDA Canadian International Development Agency CP Country Program CT Cash Transfer DAC Development Assistance Committee (OECD) DCD Deputy Country Director ECHO European Commission Humanitarian Office EPRP Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan FFW Food for Work FSC Food Security Coordinator HDDS Household Dietary Diversity Score HIP (ECHO) Humanitarian Implementation Plan KAP Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices OFDA (U.S.) Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance PC Program Coordinator PDM Post Distribution Monitoring PEC Pris en Charge PLW Pregnant and Lactating Women PM Program Manager SDC Swiss Development Cooperation SIDA Swedish International Development Agency SITREP Situation Report TA Technical Assistance WARO (ACF) West Africa Regional Office WASH Water, Sanitation and Hygiene WFP World Food Programme (U.N.)

Acknowledgements

The evaluators were able to carry out their review of an extensive relief operation carried out in five countries over a wide geographic area thanks to the cooperation and support from numerous ACF colleagues in London, Paris, Madrid, Dakar, and the five country program (CP) offices in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania. An overwhelming (for two evaluators over a short period of time) amount of background, program planning and monitoring documents were made available for review by the evaluators. Complicated logistical arrangements were adroitly made for movement among the five countries of the region as well as within each country so that the evaluators could get to as many project sites and to visit as many stakeholders as possible in a very limited amount of time. Ends of calendar years – with their year-end reporting requirements, proposal preparations for donors’ new fiscal humanitarian planning and closing international conferences - are never easy times for encountering persons with sufficient time to meet and respond to the inquiries put forth by the evaluators. Nevertheless countless ACF colleagues and those representing host governments, local community leaders and beneficiaries, and informed international organizations generously gave their time to meet with the evaluators – sometimes on short notice.

Though we are grateful to so many, we feel a special need to acknowledge the support received from focal points at ACF headquarters (HQs) and WARO, as well as the Country Directors (CD) in the four countries visited who mobilized their staff and logistical means to provide us with the access we needed to many persons and resources.

Scarlett Barclay of the Evaluation, Learning and Accountability Office of ACF/UK demonstrated skill and patience in arranging air transportation to move us around the world and within West Africa according to a tight schedule. Segolen Guillaumat, Program Manager in ACF/France and Lucia Prieto, Project Officer in ACF/Spain pulled together many useful documents for review and initiated arrangements with WARO and the four CP offices for our arrivals and briefings. Barbara Frattaruolo, WARO Program Coordinator provided similar facilitation once the team arrived in Dakar.

The four CDs: Jacques Terrenoire (Chad), Anne Bichard (Burkina Faso), Thierry Metais (Niger) and Franck Vannetelle (Mali), were gracious hosts, informed professional contacts, and objectively critical sounding boards for the evolving observations of the evaluators during the course of the inquiries in their countries.

Too many other international and national colleagues provided valuable support and assistance to be singles out at this time. Nevertheless, we, the evaluators are sincerely impressed with your dedication to making the evaluation a fruitful exercise and grateful for your efforts on our behalf.

Executive Summary

The 2011/2012 Sahel Drought Emergency was large in scale and geographic scope. It affected a broad region of Africa that, under normal conditions, presents aid organizations with enormous logistical challenges. Within this scenario, ACF did not just mobilize a response in each of the affected Sahelian countries where it has an operational presence (Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad -See map in Annex 1 ), but rather did so within a regional strategic framework that sought to align its response as closely as possible to the dynamics that evolve from pro-active anticipation, to actual response, and on to initiatives that would reinforce the resilience of beneficiaries to withstand and mitigate future food security shocks1.

On the first front, ACF was instrumental as a member of the international humanitarian community in detecting the scale and scope of the drought and its probable effects on food security among the region’s already vulnerable population. As early as November, 2011 headquarters (HQ) in Paris and Madrid sounded an alarm of the impending crisis and vigorously pursued a international campaign to create awareness and lobby for a timely and generous response.

In concert, HQs and the West Africa Regional Office (WARO), worked with country programs (CP) to carry out ground assessments to ground-truth what biomass mapping was indicating and to work with national authorities, and the humanitarian community as a whole, to identify where priority should be given for assistance delivery and to devise a response plan. WARO worked with donors who maintained a regional representation in Dakar while individual CPs and their HQs worked their traditional donors to generate the resources necessary for their plan of response. When all was said and done, 53 grant proposals were developed, negotiated and approved for the five countries totaling approximately 28.8 million Euros. WARO was instrumental in negotiating three multi-country grants from the European Commission Humanitarian Office (ECHO), The Department of Foreign International Development of the United Kingdom (DFID) and the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA).

The grants corresponded to the three phases of response outlined in the West Africa Strategy. The earliest grant approved in December 2011, by ECHO, was planned to respond early, in what would prove to be an extended hunger season, to mitigate the negative impacts of the drought on the food gap of the most vulnerable segments of the population. As subsequent grants were approved, ACF CPs scaled up their cash and food assistance to reach greater numbers of beneficiaries over a longer period to eventually cover the whole hunger period.

Cash assistance was found to be the most appropriate modality to assist households in filling their food gaps. When appropriate, assistance was provided on a conditioned basis as Cash For Work (CFW), except to households with special needs/limitations such as age, infirmity/disability or status as a female-headed-household with limited time to engage in work. Later in the emergency as households began preparing their land for the next planting cycle, assistance was converted to non-conditioned assistance. CFW supported the construction of

1 ACF WEST AFRICA OPERATIONAL STRATEGY 2011 - 2015

productive infrastructure that would contribute to increased food production and productivity (planting techniques using concentrated micro-doses of fertilizer – “zains”; soil and water conservation measures on agricultural and pasture lands – “demi-lunes”, rock barriers; and the rehabilitation of paddy rice fields – “bas-fonds”). The final phase of assistance took the form of providing warrant credit to protect harvests and provide liquidity to farmers to start income- generating activities, purchase agricultural inputs or just purchase food to bridge their needs until the next harvest (conducted in Niger, and in Mali within non-emergency projects). ACF also replenished herds decimated by drought in Chad. These latter projects, as well as the activities supported by CFW were designed to development/reinforce the resilience of beneficiaries to future shocks to food security.

All the while, ACF continued to provide its signature support to national health systems to build their capacity to carry out systematic treatment of severe acute malnutrition among children under the age of 5 years. At no time were those interventions so important as during the 2012 drought which placed children at greater risk of falling into severe malnutrition. ACF’s support to health centers enabled them to absorb what increases might occur and to adhere to national protocols of treatment so as to meet and exceed targets for healing, abandonment and mortality among participating children.

While it is hard to offer a precise and definitive number of household which were benefited from ACF’s response (some of the same families participated in more than one phase of the response supported by more than one project). A reasonable estimate can be made that approximately 38,000 households received assistance from ACF’s emergency response in the five Sahelian countries. That would place the number of direct beneficiaries at around 266,000 persons.

The afore-mentioned successes were not achieved without facing some significant challenges. The CP in Mali had to operate in an environment of serious insecurity in its originally targeted zone of operations – Gao and Ansongo. After just one month of implementation during the month of May, 2012 rising insecurity in the outlying villages where food security interventions were being carried out forced the decision to suspend activities there. With very little notice, ACF effectively identified other areas of priority need and relocated remaining activities to Kita and Banamba.

All the while the Mali CP was operating with high levels of staff turn-over and vacancies in key positions (starting notably with an extended period without a CD and a Technical Coordinator (Chief of Programs). HQ in Spain, supported by the French HQ supplied significant temporary support from members of their emergency pools to fill gaps – though most were dedicated early on to task associated with strategy and project development. Key vacancies and a “revolving door” of interim CDs surely adversely affected decision-making, monitoring and reporting.

ACF/Chad also operated under similar (though not so serious) human resource limitations. Under more stable leadership, and benefiting from an availability of qualified national professions upon which to base operations, the Burkina Faso and Niger CPs faced considerably fewer operational challenges when implementing their response.

The presence of WARO provided a valuable organizational resource to the CPs and the regional response. Nevertheless, it, too is still developing its role and value proposition vis a vis the international HQs and the CPs. The regional strategy document is an important start. Yet there is still considerable work still to be done to operationalize it in a consistent manner across the five Sahelian countries of the region, as well as the other countries that make up the region. A regional modus operandi is still a work in progress that will require considerable analysis, debate and formulation in very close concert with CDs and the concerned HQs. These same observations were made in the course of an external evaluation specifically of WARO, which was carried out in February/March 2013.

When one considered the factors that governed the operational effectiveness of the CPs as they implemented emergency response, the role that counting on a stable and qualified cadre of national staff professions, as was the case in Burkina Faso and Niger, stands out as a key determinant. ACF/Burkina Faso’s approach was to establish national “deputy” positions for all key management posts that are currently held by international staff. Staff assigned to those positions are carefully and rigorously recruited and accorded all of the responsibilities and authority befitting the position. As they work alongside and receive the benefit of coaching, mentoring and supervision from their international colleagues, they are groomed to eventually ascend to the lead position on a permanent basis. The time table is open-ended to permit learning/capacity-building to take place organically, without artificial timetables and deadlines (something that may have led to the less-than-acceptable results of ACF/Mali’s “nationalization” process which started in 2009). In the opinion of the evaluators, Burkina Faso’s approach, under the guidance of HQ in Paris represents a “best practice” that is worthy of careful review by the other countries of the region and of replication going forward (Annex 2 – Best Practice Reporting Table).

Judging the overall performance of ACF’s emergency response according to generally accepted DAC criteria, the evaluators consider ACF’s performance at the regional and national levels to have been moderately high. The program gets High performance marks for “Impact”, “Relevance/Appropriateness”, and “Effectiveness”. Performance with regard to “Sustainability”, “Coherence”. “Coverage”, and “Efficiency” are considered Moderate. This is not to say that ACF’s performance was lacking or sub-par in those categories, but its capacity to perform at a higher level was impeded by the short-term, emergency nature of the interventions, the limited amount of resources that were available to achieve greater/more complete coverage of the overall need and some of the operational challenges/issues cited above, as well as factors beyond the control of ACF, such as insecurity in Mali and the late availability of financing in Burkina Faso for the ECHO Relève project. Fortunately, ACF was not a lone actor in emergency response in Burkina Faso, with WFP and NGOs in position to cover unmet needs. (Annex 3 - Rating of Project Achievements In Terms of DAC Criteria)

Background Sporadic and inadequate rains were recorded across the West African Sahel during the 2011/2012 planting/growing season, producing significant shortfalls in food production on the part of farmers and pastoralists in Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, as well as northern Senegal, northern Nigeria and northern Cameroon. With food insecurity already chronic/structural in many parts of the region, the number of food insecure households increased along with the number of children vulnerable to acute malnutrition. If that weren’t already enough, migrants from Libya and Cote d’Ivoire continued to return to the affected countries to place added burdens on weakened productive capacity. So soon after a similar 2009/2010 drought, households had been unable to recover, and their resilience was further eroded. At that time ACF had full operations in Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad, as well as a West Africa Regional Office (WARO) in Dakar (operational since the 2010 drought emergency) which provided technical and donor liaison support to ACF’s country program offices. In the wake of the 2010 drought, WARO and its constituent country program offices, with the backstopping of headquarters in Paris and Madrid, had developed a regional strategic plan covering the period 2011 to 2015, which drew upon lessons for the recent drought emergency. The strategy rested on the lesson that since 2005 the major effort to address the issue (of malnutrition) in the region had focused on improving the response to high intensity peaks, rather than implementing structural responses to the causes of under-nutrition. The strategy set out to reduce structural vulnerability, and to flatten the regular peaks of nutrition related morbidities. It proposed to undertake “smart integration” and a comprehensive approach through multiple pathways, including agriculture, social and behavior issues, water, hygiene, and social protection.2 As early as September of 2011, ACF, particularly the French headquarters, sounded an alert of poor rains resulting in biomass deficiency which signaled upcoming grain harvest shortfalls and shortfalls in pasture for livestock in the Sahel. ACF France and Spain launched concerted public awareness and lobbying of key humanitarian actors/donors for the purpose of mobilizing resources. The regional response envisioned three phases: Mitigation, Response, and Rehabilitation. Resources were mobilized at both the “bilateral” level between country programs and interested donors (in concert with their respective HQs), as well as regionally through WARO solicitation of donors. The first of five regional response grants from donors was approved by ECHO in November, 2011 to support mitigation efforts in Mauritania, Mali and Burkina Faso. Subsequent grants followed from ECHO, The British Department for International Development (DFID), the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), and the the French Development Agency (AFD).

2 Op.Cit.. OPERATIONAL STRATEGY 2011 - 2015

Evaluation Methodology The approach for the evaluation had been outlined in Terms of Reference issued by ACF (Annex 4). Even with two evaluators, the 37 days allocated for desk and field work represented a very tight time frame given the geographic and operational scope of the emergency response. Short briefings were conducted with concerned ACF staff in the Paris HQ and the Dakar WARO prior to carrying out the heart of the evaluation in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad (Mauritania was not scheduled for field work in given that an evaluation of ACF’s emergency response in that country was in the process of being concluded. (Annex 5 : schedule). A set of program and planning documents were furnished by ACF/UK to the evaluators before arrival in the field. Those documents were supplemented by numerous regional, country program, and humanitarian coordination documents obtained from ACF HQs, WARO and the country missions (Annex 6: Resource Materials/Bibliography). The sheer volume of primary written material, while very valuable, was far too great to read and analyzed in the 37 allotted days. Where progress reports and other documents that synthesized program operations and accomplishments were available, they were reviewed by the evaluators. Country visits were aligned according to ACF HQ responsibilities. Consequently Mr. Wiater worked in Mali and Niger (ACF/Spain) and Mr. Le Bloas worked in Burkina Faso and Chad (ACF/France). In all four countries, the time available was too limited to make visits to all implementation sites and to undertake extensive contact with beneficiaries and community leaders (Annex 7: Persons Interviewed). Interviews with national authority stakeholders and donors in each country was took place on the basis of their availability to meet around a limited number of days available in each capital city. In the case of Mali, insecurity in Gao and the northern communes of Kita made travel to those areas impossible. Individual meetings were conducted with key actors in the international humanitarian community in Dakar and in the four capitals. Similar meetings were held in the field with concerned government authorities and local leaders. Information and opinions were obtained from beneficiaries through structured group discussions. Individual household meetings and in depth data collection from beneficiaries were impossible due to time limitations and the logistical constraints associated with the distances that needed to be covered. Therefore information was gathered through structured interviews with groups of select beneficiaries.

Findings Overall Emergency Response Timeliness ACF collaborated with other actors, particularly WFP, in providing timely early warning of the impending crisis to donors and the rest of the humanitarian community. In October, 2011 ACF put together and disseminated biomass maps which graphically showed the affect that poor rains were having on vegetation in the form of crops and pasture. WARO, with inputs from country programs, widely disseminated the results of food price monitoring in national markets

throughout the region. At the end of January, 2012 ACF reported on updated nutritional status among children under 5 years of age, showing that deterioration was underway. And in the case of Mali, ACF issued an update on political tensions and insecurity in the region of Gao and its effect of food insecurity and malnutrition. Key members of the humanitarian community at the regional level and national levels, notably OCHA and WFP, representatives of national government early warning services, local prefecture representatives, as well as an important donor, ECHO, expressed the value they attached to ACF’s timely compilation of indicators of the extent and seriousness of the drought emergency. WARO made timely overtures to the donor community, resulting in the approval of a first regional grant from ECHO (ECHO Mitigation – WA1AA) in early December 2011 for food security interventions (conditional cash transfers in Mauritania, Mali and Burkina Faso). All five country programs, in concert with their respective HQs, also made timely overtures to donors for “bilateral” grants. Numerous food security and nutrition grants were negotiated, approved and initiated in advance of the peak hungry season in the various countries. The Niger CP, in particular, negotiated and initiated a major grant with WFP for food security and nutrition interventions that got under way as early as January, 2012. Conclusion: ACF’s overall responses to the Sahel drought emergency at the international, regional and country program levels were timely.

Appropriateness of the Strategy

The key basis upon which ACF built its 2012 emergency response was its 2011-2013 West Africa Operational Strategy, which had been developed in the wake of the previous 2009/2010 drought emergency. The timed and integrated approach outlined in the strategy was completely appropriate for an effective response to the drought emergency that affected the region in 2011/2012. CP “operational strategies” in Niger (2012-2015), Burkina Faso (2012-2014), Mali (2011-2015) and Chad (2012-2015) had also been developed and were in place at the time of this latest crisis. A Country Strategy document for Mauritania was not made available at the time of the evaluation.

The country documents were coherent with the regional strategy, particularly with regard to the importance of and need for an integrated approach and a commitment to strengthening health system capacities, along with improving methods to measure malnutrition status and risk. With varying degrees of explicitness, and using varying styles of articulation and structure, all regional strategic objectives were covered in the country strategies. Notable exceptions were lack of explicit reference in the Mali and Burkina Faso plans to a sub-objective to address “seasonal action and social protection” as a means of “tackling peaks of nutritional vulnerabilities”. Similarly, the Mali plan made no commitment to managing MAM.

When compared, the regional strategy document outlines in the clearest fashion a logical and coherent scope and sequence of programming into the future. As a regional identity and modus operandi evolves it will be important that the country strategy documents mirror even more the regional strategy in scope and composition, leaving country-specific operational specifics in the country plans. By unifying further the different levels of planning documents, intra-regional

information sharing and learning could be more effectively carried out, as well as human resource exchanges for learning and emergency surge support.

It should be noted that the recently installed CD for Mali was unaware of the existence of a country strategy, nor did the document seem to be part of his briefing prior to taking his assignment. In all frankness, in none of the countries were the strategy documents made note of when discussing programming. Such an important document must be a essential part of staff orientation – particularly leadership – and should be reviewed/monitored regularly by all staff throughout its life. All new projects developed should be assessed/judged during their conception stage against the strategic plan. .

The regional and CP strategies were absolutely correct in identifying the fact that food insecurity and malnutrition in the countries of the region were largely structural, though obviously amplified/made worse during periods of man-made and natural crises/shocks. Integrated multi- sectoral approaches would be required to achieve sustainable reductions in food insecurity and malnutrition. Such an approach would entail: 1) leveling off the systemic peaks of nutritional vulnerability (mitigation); 2) implement effective emergency response to address the very high peaks during crises (response); and 3) progressively reduce structural vulnerabilities by addressing the root causes of food insecurity and malnutrition (rehabilitation and development). The emergency responses carried out by ACF entailed elements 1 and 2, above.

In Niger, a secured credit/grain storage project was getting under way in Mayahi and Keita as an emergency rehabilitation project corresponding to element 3. In Mali, a similar intervention was being carried out within the scope of a long-term development program, but in an area which was not targeted as an emergency response zone. Chad, too, began grain storage projects in 2011, Both Mali and Chad hope to continue those projects into 2013 – contingent on funding availability. Burkina Faso is investing in projects to reduce climate-related shocks through improving rain-fed cereal production as well as low-land paddy rice (“bas-fonds”) production as the basis for strengthening long-term resilience.

In all country programs, ACF worked as an active member of humanitarian clusters, particularly those of nutrition and food security. In that capacity, ACF effectively contributed to the identification of priority food insecure zones, the development of response strategies, as well as the harmonization of implementation tactics among actors in each country in support of national authorities’ declaration of emergency needs in their respective countries. ACF’s nutrition interventions faithfully adhered to national protocols for the treatment of severe acute malnutrition and its emergency cash, and food transfers (for humans as well as livestock) were in line with those being carried out by other cluster members. Its cash and food transfers to food insecure households (conditioned and non-conditioned) were in line with approaches being taken by all organizations coordinating activities within the food security cluster.

The zones of intervention in which ACF operated Tapoa,Gnagna and Kopienga (and Gourma in Nutrition) Provinces in Burkina Faso; Gao, Asongo and eventually Kita and Koulikoro in Mali; Kanem and Bahr el Ghazal (BEG) in Chad; Keita and Mayahi in Niger; and Gorgol in Mauritania - corresponded to areas designated by national authorities as priority food insecure areas. Operations were coordinated with other humanitarian organizations through the

concerned clusters to avoid duplication of response. Neither systemic nor major incidences of assistance redundancy were observed in any of the areas where ACF implemented emergency response. Only in the case of targeting of communities for assistance in the department of Kanem in Chad were some initial complications confronted by ACF with the Red Cross

Recommendation 1: If ACF/Mauritania has not developed a country program strategy, it should do so ASAP, and align it with the 2011-2015 West Africa Strategy. WARO and the Madrid HQ should provide the country teams with all necessary support and technical assistance.

Recommendation 2: Review of the current Country Program Strategy Documents, as well as the West African Regional Strategy and ACF International Strategy, should be a fundamental part of the orientation of all new staff members, particularly those in leadership. Review of those documents’ alignment with the regional and international strategies, and progress toward achieving their objectives, should be carried out regularly at the country and regional levels.

Appropriateness of the Technical Response

In all countries ACF, in concert with concerned humanitarian clusters, cooperated with national authorities to identify the most food insecure communes to which international humanitarian assistance would be directed. Regional OCHA and WFP representatives, along with representatives of their national missions cited the ACF’s free and timely sharing of data generated at local levels within the cluster, which aided national authorities in making declarations on targeting. Market price monitoring reports and data from nutrition centers in their areas of operation were cited as particularly important.

ACF mission representatives prominently participated in the concerned decision-making bodies in each country – i.e the Groupe d’Aide Alimentaire (GAA)in Chad, sectoral working groups (Nutrition and Food Security) in Burkina Faso; and the Système d’Alerte Précoce (SAP) in Mali and Niger, within the scope of their multi-agency collaboration. The two SAP in Mali and Niger have inherited the software and hardware for biomass mapping from ACF after a three year project, complete with technical assistance. Today, they are producing maps on their own, which are being used by their governments in preparing their early warning reports and government declarations of emergencies.

Within communes declared to be food security assistance priorities by local authorities, ACF carried out further systematic and rigorous processes of needs and vulnerability assessments to identify villages experiencing the highest incidence and levels of food insecurity and malnutrition. Country mission teams implemented Household Economic Surveys (HEA), modified HEAs (HEA Lite) or vulnerability assessments to categorize households as “very poor”, “poor” and “moderate”, and “well off”. ACF received the technical assistance of government departmental technical services on matters related to establishing and analyzing vulnerability indicators.

When HEAs were performed, they often represented time-consuming and expensive exercises. They yielded valuable information that would be excellent for longer-term development projects, for the extensive base line household economic data they could produce. In Burkina Faso HEA surveys were adopted by the government as the tool to be used to identify vulnerable zones/communities to be prioritized. However, under emergency conditions which require quick action, there are quicker tools that could be employed (i.e. along the lines of WFP’s Emergency Food Security Assessments – EFSA). There was still need for ACF to work with local NGO partners and community leaders to identify those families within chosen communities who were, in fact, very poor and poor, who could be eligible for assistance.

Community members were also engaged in helping mobilize and organize workers for Cash For Work (CFW) activities, organize payment and training gatherings and for receiving complaints and/or suggestions.

It should be noted that the forced relocation of emergency activities within the scope of the ECHO Mitigation project from Gao to Kita resulted in the commune of Djijian, (only 17 kms from Kita), with its 11 villages, to be selected among the three communes served. While categorized as an economically vulnerable area by the government, it is not necessarily a food deficit area. Apparently when assessing the need in the two northern municipalities of Kita, not enough families could be identified to fill out the number of CFW beneficiaries anticipated in the original project. To meet the quota, Djijian was selected. This “back filling” process of targeting beneficiaries does not meet the strict criteria for selection called for in the original project.

That said, however, even though Djijia may not have been a very food deficit area, that is not to say that there did not exist poor and very poor households that were highly food insecure. Part of the problem of targeting according to global incidence thresholds is that at the individual household level truly needy families that , indeed, meet vulnerability criteria could be excluded from receiving assistance for having the “bad luck” of residing in an geographic area deemed to be relatively better off. Based on discussions with over 40 beneficiaries in Djijian, the evaluator came away with the sense that beneficiary households did suffer significant harvest losses due to drought and di suffer significant food insecurity as a result, thus being legitimately eligible for assistance from ACF’s emergency program.

In the end, the number of beneficiaries in each country was governed by the amount of resources available to ACF from donors. In the case of Cash Transfers (CTs) distributed with ECHO Mitigation funds, the level of coverage of the total estimated number of food insecure (food deficit) households in each area of ACF activity varied widely, ranging from 9% to 127%.

Table 1: ECHO Mitigation CT coverage of total food deficit households3 Country Est. Number of HHs HHs Benefited % Coverage Burkina Faso 34,511 3,250 9% Mali (Asongo) 3,412 2,663 78% Mali (Kita) 1,925 2,445 127% Mauritania 11,726 2,258 19% Total 51,574 10,616 21%

It could not be ascertained whether some of the significant shortfall in Burkina Faso and Mauritania were covered by other assistance programs that operated in the same zones. However, it was probably unlikely that they were able to assist most of the uncovered households. From the strictest humanitarian view, finding the “very poor” and “poor” represented a method for rationalizing how to distribute inadequate resources. ACF was obliged to adjust their beneficiary targets to the amount of resources that donors advised would be available, often based on early estimates in December 2011 of the number of affected/vulnerable households which would require assistance. It cannot be ascertained with what vigor ACF worked to build awareness of ECHO as to the total estimated need and the vigor with which it attempted to lobby for a budget which would have more completely filled the gap. In any case, the levels of resources available were largely beyond the control of ACF, having been dictated by official estimates of need and the donors.

In Kita (Mali), ACF merely transferred the same level of resources for CTs (numbers of beneficiaries) to a zone in which fewer households were estimated to suffer food deficits. ACF merely sought out “workers” to participate in CFW projects to fill the quota.

Conversations with local authorities, community leaders and the beneficiaries themselves, confirmed that the needs assessment, beneficiary selection processes, work norms, and cash payments were carried out efficiently and fairly. However, it was the general opinion of respondents that the beneficiary selection process was very difficult since matching beneficiary levels to resources available meant leaving out families whose levels of food insecurity/vulnerability were not that much different from those actually selected. To the beneficiaries, the differences between those falling into the “poor” category and those categorized as “adequate” (moyen) were very hard to distinguish. While it was hard to play the role of “King Solomon” with the livelihoods of neighbors and acquaintances, most everyone accepted the fact that resources were limited and that those selected for assistance were indeed the most needy within the communities. Therefore, there should be no doubt that those who received assistance were among the most needy of the targeted communities.

Scope and Sequence

As noted above, the emergency alert was sounded by ACF on time, though international organizations and donors were unable to make official commitments of resources until the governments of the region officially acknowledged the scale and scope of the emergency and

3 ECHO Mitigation final progress report. 24/9/2012

made a formal request for assistance, which was issued around late February/early March, 2012. While ACF put together its portfolio of regional and nation projects designed to respond to the emergency along the three phases of response outlined in the regional strategy, funding approvals materialized at different times. The actual implementation of foreseen interventions, and whether they were appropriately timed to coincide with the levels of need as they evolved through the year, and the responsibilities of beneficiaries vis a vis their agricultural/livestock cycles was conditioned by the timing of grant approvals, and in some cases, external factors outside of ACF’s total control.

At the very outset of the crisis, during the advocacy and planning period, the five concerned CPs got on board at different rates. Some sentiment exists at the regional level that certain ACF country missions were more oriented toward their own programming than to sign on to regional proposals. Niger was viewed as the country program (CP) that most doubted the urgency of the endeavor, while Mali tended to focus on implementing their large multi-year, integrated projects to shift quickly into emergency mode. The Mali and Niger CPs, for their part, tended to view the regional initiatives as a combination of WARO, and certain donor, impositions and redundant with their own capacity to solicit and negotiate grants through their respective HQs.

The first regional proposal to ECHO for emergency response was drafted by WARO staff, with technical exchanges with HQs, particularly Paris and the two emergency pools. WARO sought inputs and validation from the CPs to be involved in the project. The process was undertaken by email and telephone. At no time were the heads of mission and/or their programming chiefs brought together to work face-to-face and hand-in-hand with regional staff. According to WARO staff who worked on the proposal at that time, ACF/Paris and Madrid did not participate in or contribute to the proposal validation process. Consequently, it is not certain what signals they sent to their respective CPs with regard to their expectations for CP collaboration with WARO in the development of the proposals.

It is fair to acknowledge that the whole negotiation process for the first grant with ECHO (Mitigation) was compressed into the months of October and November of 2011, with implementation starting in early December. The first draft of the proposal was rejected by ECHO. Under those conditions, WARO had the best sense of what type of program would be most viable for ECHO approval, thus placing them in the lead in further developing the proposal.

To assess the scope and sequence of ACF’s emergency response after the initial alert was sounded one should turn to the individual country mission actions.

Burkina Faso First response to the emergency was financed by a regional grant from ECHO (BFA1E). It provided for cash transfers (conditioned in the form of CFW, and non-conditioned to those with disabilities/hardships) during the first semester of 2012 in the province of Tapoa. The assistance and the type of intervention was well-timed to coincide with beneficiaries’ ability to invest their labor in establishing productive infrastructure meant to improve their future food production/productivity, as well as improve soil and water conservation. The cash assistance that motivated the work served to meet household food and non-food consumption needs in the face of what was to be an extended hunger season in 2012.

In Tapoa, part of funds allocated to CFW supported the rehabilitation of bas-fonds for the cultivation rice in lowland swamps. Similar cash transfers from the ECHO Mitigation Project to 500 very poor and poor houesholds rehabilitated rice fields so that they could plant in 2012, obtaining their first harvest in December, 2012.

In December 2011, ACF was able to re-oriente a 24-month LRRD project in Gnagna (initiated in April, 2011), to address the food crisis among vulnerable households by introducing CFW in place of communal works for the rehabilitation soil and water conservation as well as soil protection and restoration infrastructure.4

A second regional grant from DFID (BFF1C) followed, which corresponded to the third phase of intervention – rehabilitation. The grant brought ACF’s “WASH In Nutrition” program to the last commune for role-out. The grant also provided cash transfers to very poor and poor households for two additional months during the November-December harvest season. The timing was consciously planned to compliment and support a second food security intervention of promoting warrant credit and grain storage. By putting cash liquidity in the hands of vulnerable households at the time of harvest, the ACF was attempting to reduce the amount of harvest that have to be sold at market-low prices upon harvest to pay back debt so as to enable those households to store more grain for the upcoming hungry period and to qualify for more credit, if required. The timing was appropriate and the modality of assistance was completely in keeping with ACF’s strategy

At the height of the crisis, blanket feed was provided to children under two years of age with ACF internal funds (March – June 2012) and a grant from SIDA (BFF7A). Scheduled for June to November, the SIDA supplemental feeding was timed to mitigate the effects of a prolonged hunger period on levels of malnutrition among an age group of children known to be especially vulnerable to deterioration during such a period. Blanket feeding was a generally accepted, cost effective measure to preventing a large spike in children being admitted into for severe acute malnutrition centers.

Finally, ACF reinforced the cornerstone of its program, the treatment of severe acute malnutrition at official nutrition centers in food insecure provinces of the country that demonstrate high incidences of acute malnutrition. Nationally negotiated and administered grants from OFDA (BFB2C) and ECHO (BFA1F) were appropriately designed to strengthen the capacity of the national health system to carry out effective treatment of severe acute malnutrition among children between the ages of 6 to 59 months in Tapoa and Gnagna, as well as Kompienga (by way of cash and food distributions). The projects implemented the necessary actions to ensure that a sustainable national response capacity be left in place to address both the chronic/structural levels of acute malnutrition in the country but also spikes that can occur during periods of crises that worsen food insecurity among the poor and very poor.

ACF/Burkina Faso negotiated and obtained FAO financing (OSRO/BKF/202/CHA) to distribute feed and vaccinations to agro-pastoralists (2900 households in Tapoa) and the replenishment of chicks to approximately 900 households. ACF internal funds were allocated to carry out an HEA

4 EuropeAid 2013-2014 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbc1l8Xoy-Y&feature=youtu.be

in Kompienga and subsequently for the distribution of seeds to farmers in support of rehabilitation and early recovery and blanket supplemental feeding to children between 6 and 24 months as a safety net.

Chad Soon after the alert was sounded on the eminent food security crisis in the country, ACF/Chad negotiated a food assistance grant with ECHO (through ACF/France) which was channeled through the World Food Programme (WFP) for the purposes of food procurement and logristics, to provide food assistance to 4,377 households. ACF, ECHO and WFP performed their due diligence to determine that market circumstances in Kanem warranted food distribution. However given the precarious logistical pipeline into Chad that WFP had to manage as a result of the Libya crisis having closed that corridor, the project called for only half rations to be given in kind between March and August, supplemented by one non-conditioned and two conditioned cash transfers in the form of Cash for Training (CFT) over the span of six months (March- August).

A HEA was effectively conducted to identify very poor and poor households that would qualify for assistance.

The constricted pipeline proved to be more precarious than anticipated during planning, forcing the project to reduce the in-kind distributions to only two, while adding a fourth conditioned cash transfer in partial compensation.

Because herding is the source of livelihood for a significant percentage of the population in the Kanem, ACF provided animal fodder to 3,498 pastoralist households for a period of six months (March – August) with funding from DFID. Along the same lines, 790 of those families (90% being female-heading households) deemed most vulnerable due to the loss of small livestock were provided animals in kind to start to replenish their herds. These intervention were both appropriate and essential as rehabilitation interventions to safeguard household livelihoods going forward beyond the period of the emergency.

As in all ACF programs, the cornerstone of ACF’s response was a program to strengthen the functioning of the health sector’s nutritional treatment centers in Kanem (Mao and BEG) – Ambulatory and Therapeutic (CNA and CNT being the acronyms in French) comprising a standard package of interventions to improve screening; human resource capacity building in the CNAs and CNTs; improve management of essential supplies and their replenishment; as well as improvements in the water and sanitation infrastructure of the CNAs and CNTs. ACF/Chad’s nutrition support was funded by a grant from ECHO.

With food insecurity worsening in the province, nutrition centers began to be inundated with new admissions beyond their capacity as early as January – rather than in April that was initially anticipated in the project’s planning. In response, ACF urgently established 3 mobile nutrition teams in January to increase the health system to screen and treat malnutrition on a timelier basis closer to communities evidencing the highest incidences. With timely screening and supplemental feeding being provided to children found to be malnourished by the mobile teams, admissions into the CNTs and CNAs were stabilized by February.

Mali Within the scope of the ECHO Mitigation project (MLA1AD), ACF/Mali sought to respond to the worsening food crisis in two communes of the “Cercle” of Asongo in northern province of Gao, its established base of operations. Food security assistance in the form of Conditioned Cash Transfers (CFW) was to take place for three months starting in March, 2012, which was appropriate in response to a prolonged hunger period. The mitigation action to be carried out with ECHO funding was to tie in with a longer-term, multi-year integrated programme involving nutrition, food security and WASH which was in the final phase of preparation for implementation.

Though security tensions were rising at the time, the decision was made to initiate the CFW activities involving the production of productive agricultural and soil & water conservation infrastructure (zains, demi-lunes, and water catchment ponds). A vulnerability assessment was conducted in March and the first cash payment wasmade that same month.

With only one month of activity completed, insecurity obliged the mission to suspend project activities in Gao and forced relocation to another zone targeted by the government. In remarkable time, the country mission identified 3 Comunes in the Cercle of Kita as alternative implementation areas. By May, vulnerability assessments were carried out and beneficiaries were prioritized and registered, and CFW activities were initiated. Though some staff were relocated from Asongo, the relocation was facilitated by existence of a sub-office in Kita from which a multi-year integrated nutrition/food security/WASH project was being managed. The May/June CFW activities met the hunger period window, though the second month of work/payment was carried out just as the first rains were arriving in the region and when beneficiaries were preparing their fields for planting.

With the imminent arrival of the planting season upon the beneficiaries at the time of relocating project activities in Kita (field preparations begin as early as April), one might wonder whether it would have been advisable to reconsider the appropriateness of CFW in favor of unconditioned cash transfers so as to not overtax beneficiaries. No evidence was found that the option ever surfaced and was considered by mission, regional or HQ staff.

A follow-up food security project in the form of non-conditioned cash transfers was funded by OFDA (MLB2AA). It was planned to continue providing assistance to the same beneficiaries in Kita for three additional months (July-September). However, funding was delayed by OFDA and a first distribution not taking place until October (three months after the last distribution made to beneficiaries). Members of the mission who were interviewed were not familiar with all of the circumstances surrounding the grant negotiations to explain why funding approval was delayed. However, the timing seems to indicate to the evaluator that OFDA may have pushed back funding to coincide with a new fiscal year that began on October 1. Further delays ensued forcing the second and third distributions to be combined and made during the first week of December – while the evaluation was being conducted.

By October, the harvest had already and even was nearing completion by the time the final disbursements were to be made. By that time, the hunger period was easing, leaving one to question whether further cash assistance was justified, other than the fact that resources had

already been approved by the donor. While, ex post, mission staff rationalized that the late cash transfer allowed families to pay off some debt they might have otherwise paid off from their harvest, no tangible evidence could be found that rationale was consciously planned and promoted with beneficiaries by project staff. Nevertheless, the evaluator finds the reasoning to be reasonably plausible.

Blanket Feeding of children between the ages of 6 and 23 months was planned for four communes of Koulikoro for five months (September, 2012 to January 2013. Whereas the original proposal anticipated implementation in Gao in conjunction with the PASA V multi-year, integrated project starting in April, the project had to be relocated with the onset of insecurity in the region. Reformulation of the proposal did not take place until July/August, with initiation of feeding planned for September. After confusion over single source procurement authorization for the purchase of a locally-produced fortified product, Misola, distribution did not commence until early December, 2012.

Whereas Blanket Feeding would have been an appropriate intervention to reduce spikes in severe acute malnutrition among young children during the hunger season, providing blanket feeding well into and beyond the harvest is questionable. Generally accepted protocols call for blanket feeding to be conducted during the hunger season for optimum impact. The divergence from protocol was not questioned within ACF/Mali, or by nutrition staff in WARO or the Madrid HQ, nor was consideration given to postponing BF until the next hunger period. Instead, they rationalized going forward with BF out of uncertainty of whether the harvest would be adequate. In any case, some nutritional benefit would be gained by beneficiary children from the supplemental feeding. It would appear that contractual obligations to the donor to implement the project as planned out-weighed technical appropriateness.

While a warrant credit program was underway in the southern communes of the Kita Cercle within the scope of a multi-year integrated project, such assistance was not part of the emergency package. Given the last-minute transfer of the operations to Kita from Gao and the pressure it placed on staff to gear up rapidly, it is understandable that such a program that requires careful planning would not be feasible in Kita on short notice. Nevertheless, under other circumstances it would have been an appropriate and productive addition to the package of assistance in keeping with the regional strategy

Despite insecurity in the Cercle of Gao and the suspension of all field programming in the region, ACF’s nutrition interventions continued in the nutrition center of Gao, where security could still be reasonably ensured. The interventions were part of the standard ACF package of capacity strengthening. The technical response was appropriate in light of the region’s high incidence of acute malnutrition. The ACF nutrition program achieved full coverage of all health centers in the cercle and put in place screening systems and procedures to identify malnourished children in the villages and refer them to the nutritional centers.

Nutrition interventions were also carried out in all health centers in the Cercle of Kita within the scope of ACF’s multi-year, integrated program ACF faithfully adhered to all standard protocols for the treatment of acute severe malnutrition as it provided technical assistance and training to health personnel.

Niger The cornerstone of ACF/Niger’s response was a Cash Transfer intervention to vulnerable households in the departmentss of Keita and Mayahi, which was funded by WFP (NED4AF and NED4AH). Appropriately, Conditioned CTs in the form of CFW were made early in the response (February to May), while Non-conditioned CTs were utilized with the advent of the rainy/planting season (June-September). Cash transfers were appropriately timed to fill the food gap during the prolonged hungry period of 2012. Also positive was the fact that WFP agreed to raise the final monthly CT amounts slightly to compensate for market price rises as the hunger season progressed prior to the upcoming harvest.

The soil and water conservation infrastructure that was built with the support of CFW was appropriately relevant to the needs of farmers in terms of improving future agricultural/livestock production and productivity. The projects were properly conceived and planned. Unfortunately emergency funding “envelopes” were limited to one-year time frames making, consolidation actions subject to continued funding – which ACF/Niger is committed to pursuing. This is particularly essential to the impact of water catchment ponds and “demi-lunes” for which continued work remains to be done and which require persistent awareness-building and training of beneficiaries/communities in terms of how they need to maintain/manage the infrastructure for productive benefit.

Very vulnerable households were identified to participate (20% of all households that received cash transfers) in a third phase of assistance which corresponded to the third element of the regional strategy – rehabilitation and resilience building. To this effect provided seed and fertilizer support to farmers with funding from CIDA (NEF2AC) and from the private telecommunications company, Orange (NEKEAB). Seeds and fertilizer were procured and distributed on time to meet the planting window. The beneficiary selection process was appropriately carried out and limited resources were appropriately allocated to households found to be most in need of rehabilitation assistance because they were unable to save seed for their limited prior harvest.

ACF provided further rehabilitation assistance in Keita and Mayahi to select beneficiary households in the form of warrant credit to vulnerable households. Participation was appropriately voluntary. In light of the fact that warrantage credit had been initiated in the zone in 2011, the practice and benefits were known to many in the region. As such, it was more readily embraced and demand for participation had increased from 2011 levels (in fact, demand had significantly exceeded the resources available). Only 8% of the households that received cash transfers received warrant credit assistance.

It is worth noting that the terms of the duration of warrant credit issued in Niger was for a period of four months at an annual interest rate of 36%, whereas that provided in Mali was for a period of 12 months at an annual interest rate of 24% (payable in advance if credit recipients so desired). Clearly, the differences are contextual with interest rates and amortization periods governed by economic conditions specific to each country and the financial condition of each financial institution.

The longer period accorded in Mali can benefit recipients in a couple of ways:

1) Farmers can take fuller advantage of market price evolution (increases) before they withdraw their grain from the granary to for consumption and or sale for the repayment of the debt. If farmers need to sell some of their grain after only four months to cover the loan repayment, they will not take full advantage of market prices increases further down the road. Needless to say, a rigorous analysis needs to be carried out to determine if the increase in grain prices later in the year can off-set the additional interest charges that would be incurred by holding the loan longer. 2) The longer repayment period permits loan recipients to retain their capital for productive investment longer, permitting more reinvestment in their small enterprises for growth. Some investments, by their nature, may require longer amortization periods.

ACF staff in Niger explained the difference in loan repayment duration as a matter of policy of the local financial institution with which ACF partnered. Since ACF supplied no capital for the loans, relying on the partner organization to grant loans from its existing capital, it did not have a right to question the partners’ loan repayment duration policy. The position is legitimate, but it need not preclude ACF’s engaging partners in a critical analysis of policy alternatives from the point of view of both the financial institution as well as the clients/beneficiaries.

In summary, interventions carried out by ACF in response to the drought emergency in the region were carried out in appropriate scope and sequence and in accordance with the West African strategic plan.

Recommendation 3: A) To obtain maximum food security/nutritional impact, cash and food assistance should be provided during the hungry season (“soudure”) and for its duration of the season; and B) If cash assistance is provided outside of the hungry season “window”, the effect that it is expected to generate should be explicitly acknowledged in advanced and worked toward during implementation.

Recommendation 4: Given that food insecurity and malnutrition will continue to be endemic and chronic in the region, ACF/WARO and country missions should incorporate timed and targeted safety net interventions (Cash/Food Assistance/ Blanket and Supplementary Feeding) in country strategies, annual work plans and donor solicitations regardless of whether an emergency situation exists or not.

Effectiveness of the Technical Response

Mitigation and Response CTs and food assistance effectively filled a food gap experienced by poor and very poor households in the region as a result of drought. Over 166,000 households identified as very poor and poor in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad received assistance

From the data sources reviewed by the evaluators, it has been difficult, if not impossible, to determine with precision the precise number of households which received cash transfers. Monitoring and reporting documents list total number of beneficiaries per grant, but in the case of concurrent grants in the same regions/communities, it has been impossible to determine where there might have been double counting when the same household benefited from both grants. The quality of assistance is vastly different depending on whether 100 HHs received CTs for three months, as opposed to 50 HHs during six months. Both benefited households, but in different ways.

In the case of Mali, where the ECHO Mitigation project was relocated from Ansongo to Kita, progress reports claim that distributions exceeded targets by 88%, because Kita beneficiaries were counted separately. However, had the project remained in Ansongo, the number of beneficiaries may have reached between 80% and 100%. ACF/Mali’s reporting is not, strictly speaking, inaccurate; but it is somewhat misleading in that it implies that all of the households received the full quota of distributions to meet their needs for a significant part of the hungry season. In reality the households in Ansongo received only one out of three planned distribution; so in the case of those beneficiaries, the quality of assistance received was not according to plan, though definitely beyond the control of ACF.

Using a simple, though imperfect, assumption of taking the highest number of beneficiaries recorded for concurrent grants (assuming that the same beneficiaries benefited from both grants), then target achievement for the cash transfers under the ECHO Mitigation project would be:

Table 2: Cash transfer beneficiary target achievement (ECHO Mitigation) Mauritania Burkina Faso Mali Total Grant Planned 3,625 2,500 3,412 9,537 Achieved 2,258 3,2505 2,663 8,171 Percentage 62% 130% 78% 86%

The average amount of cash transfer received by each household varied significantly between countries.

Table 3: Average CT disbursements per household per month by country and project Country/Project CFA/Household/Month Burkina Faso ECHO Mitigation Tapoa 23,500 Gnagna 12,500 ECHO Response Tapoa 25,000 Gnagna 25,000 Kampienga 25,000 DFID Response Tapoa 25,000

5 ACF/BF received a budget supplement from funds unused by ACF/Mauritania and Mali

Chad ECHO 14,000 (April/June/August) 25,000 (December) Mali ECHO Mitigation Asongo 19,000 Kita 17,327 OFDA Response Kita 60,000 Niger WFP 27,277

In part this was the result of CT norms that were agreed upon by the food security clusters in each country on the basis of food deficit estimates and the market cost of food in each region. However the differences within the same project (ECHO Mitigation in Burkina Faso) between projects in the same country were significant (ECHO Mitigation and OFDA in Mali). Even more telling was the percentage of the food gap that each month’s CT represented. Using the ECHO Mitigation Project as an example, in Mali, 23% of the estimated food gap in Ansongo was covered while 69% of the gap was covered in Kita. In Burkina Faso, 50% and 43% of the food gaps were met in Tapoa and Gnagna, respectively. Finally in Mauritania CTs covered 56% of the gap.6 The very low coverage level in Ansongo, Mali was the result of the precipitous suspension of assistance after one month out of the planned three.

In all four countries, Post Distribution Monitoring confirmed that a very significant percentage of the cash received was allocated to the purchase of food. According to post distribution monitoring surveys, approximately 80% of cash received was used to buy food. However, in the case of CFW conducted in Kita, Mali a PDM survey revealed that only 29% of cash received was spent on food. 23% was used for school and health expenses, while 13% was used to purchase livestock. 9% was used to pay down debt or kept as savings.

In the Kita Cercle, the project team had difficulties finding households to participate in the CFW activities. A probable cause was that work was scheduled for May and June, very close to the first rains of the planting season. Many farmers were probably already preparing their fields for planting at the time. To fill the quota of beneficiaries, households could send more than one member to work on the project. Because payment was made according to the amount of infrastructure, households that volunteered more workers “earned” more. According to the June PDM for Kita, while 66% of beneficiaries received less than 15,000 CFA per month, another 24% took home between 15,000 and 30,000 CFA. 2% of those surveyed took home more than 120,000 CFA. During a focus group discussion with beneficiaries in Djidjian, one single mother of six children acknowledged receiving only 10,000 CFA per month (20,000 for two month’s work) because she did not have enough time to produce more zains. Meanwhile two other respondents acknowledged having taken home more than 21,000 CFA per month. Household size may have played a role, though monitoring did not track the amount of CT provided to households on a per capital basis, nor did work norms take into account family size

6 ECHO Mitigation final progress report. 24/9/2012

Under normal development conditions, the construction of productive infrastructure could be the primary concern of a project. However, in a drought emergency, the primary objective/concern should be assuring that all vulnerable/food deficit households equitably meet their food needs to the extent possible.

Recommendation 5: To ensure that CFW assistance serves to equitably meet the food deficit for all beneficiary households, work norms should be developed that ensures that equitable assistance is provided to all beneficiary households on a per capita basis. Fill the food gap should be the primary concern, even over the construction of productive infrastructure. In this regard, policies and work norms should be adopted at a regional level, subject to specific arrangement made at the national level in concert with national authorities and/or the Food Security Cluster.

Regardless of the level of coverage provided, (demographic and in terms of time) CTs provided a positive safety net for those households which participated in the projects. Information available from monitoring of the ECHO Mitigation project demonstrated that the CTs had a marked positive affect on the percentage of households that faced food insecurity upon receiving cash assistance. As measured by food consumption scores, the number of beneficiaries surveyed who lived in food insecurity at the end of distribution had fallen in Burkina Faso by 72% and 24% in Tapoa and Gnagna, respectively. The apparent significantly lower level of impact in Gnagna may be associated with the smaller CT provided to each household per month (as noted in Table 3, above). A drop of 25% occurred in Kita, Mali (after two distributions). No data was available for Gao, since insecurity precluded carrying out the necessary PDM after its sole distribution.

Disaggregating the data on improvements in Kita revealed that the largest drop in the percentage of households experiencing severe food insecurity was among “poor” households, whereas that poverty group may have experienced a very slight up-tick in the number that experienced moderate food insecurity. “Very poor” households experienced smaller reductions in the numbers in the severe and moderate food insecurity categories.7

While improvements in levels of food security were obtained in the two countries compared, it behooves ACF/WARO to try to analyze what factors contributed to the significant differences of improvements in the two areas of Burkina Faso, and why Burkina Faso’s improvement was so much greater than that in Mali. The nominal value of the cash transfer that was received by each household (not merely an average), as well as its purchasing power relative to food prices) in the various locations of the two countries may have been factors. The duration of assistance (only two months of distribution in Kita vs.4 months in Burkina Faso) could have also played a role. Also, individual households’ decisions on how to allocate the cash received may have played a role. The scope of the evaluation and time available did not permit such an in depth level of review and analysis by the evaluators.

Another fact that should temper the sense of accomplishment is that food security analysis data from Kita, Mali showed that households in the “medium” poverty range, which did not participate in the CT program, actually experienced a rise in their numbers which fell into food insecurity during May and June, period during which the ECHO Mitigation project was

7 Baseline-End line surveys for the ECHO Mitigation Project in Kita, Mali

implemented. Whereas no moderately poor households experienced “severe” food insecurity at the time of the baseline survey, approximately 20% did at the time of the end line. The percentage of households categorized as ‘moderately” food insecure experienced a slight up-tick at the time of the end line compared with the baseline (resulting from “secure” households deteriorating into insecurity). This would call into question the effectiveness of basing beneficiary selection during the heart of the hunger period merely on conditions prior to the onset of the period of particular food insecurity. Similar surveys were not made available in the other country programs visited to determine if similar circumstances existed.

The data source of above information should be further analyzed in further detail and with rigor to guide future decision-making on: a) the most appropriate or cost-effective types of safety nets to be employed; b) participation selection criteria (i.e. broadening the universe); c) establishing work norms and payment criteria; d) assistance duration; and e) the advisability of putting in place blanket feeding of particularly vulnerable members of the population as an targeted safety net.

The work carried out by CFW beneficiaries met and, in some projects, exceeded targets. In Burkina Faso, infrastructure construction was properly and effectively carried out. Soil and water conservation works (demi-lunes and cordons pierreux –stone barriers ) vastly exceeded projected targets (by 400%) largely as a result of project participants stating that they began practicing such techniques in their own field without CFW assistance. Targets for the arrangement of paddy rice fields (“bas-fonds”) met 100% of projected targets (84 ha. at 10 sites). However, the 84 hectares of cultivable surface area only represented 0.06 ha. per beneficiary household. To obtain more significant economic impact, more years of work will be required. Consolidation and growth will be achieved within the scope of development interventions that will follow emergency interventions at the end of February 2013 (EUROPEAID FSTP Tapoa 2013-2014).

Due to time constraints posed by the change of CFW venue in Mali, CFW in Kita primarily focused on learning to plant using the technique of “zains”. Some limited work was done on the construction of “demi-lunes” as an orientation/experiment and only one water catchment pond was dug. While harvest results were not completed at the time of the evaluation, anecdotal information was coming in that the zains were not always having the beneficial effect anticipated. The head of the Agricultural Service in Kita believe that the results reflect insufficient time to adapt the planting technique to the particular soils, rainfall levels in the CFW project zone. A simple replication was not enough. There also seemed to be some inadequate understanding on the part of beneficiaries in at least one village of the purpose and functions of demi-lunes (beneficiaries confused them with zains) leading to disagreements on their spacing. The one water catchment pond was only half excavated when rains started to fall and work had to be suspended. In all, further training and technical assistance will be required if the productive infrastructure promoted is to be practiced in a sustainable manner. A two-month intervention was simply an unrealistic time frame during which to promote such improvements in agriculture and soil & water conservation techniques.

In Niger, infrastructure construction targets were fully met. Demi-lunes were constructed on 46.15 ha. of pasture land in an area of over 400 ha. designated by local authorities of five

villages of the commune of Kanembakach in Mayahi. Less than half of the demi-lunes had been planted with grass to stabilize them. Needless to say, there is still considerable work to do to consolidate the achievement and to ensure that the infrastructure is maintained/managed in a sustainable way. Similarly, five villages in two communes met their targets for the digging zains for planting on slightly more than 30 ha. However, on a per beneficiary basis, the output represented only 0.25 ha./household. Harvest results had not yet been tabulated for the fields planted with zain to determine if the technique resulted in improved yields. However one farmer respondent acknowledge having recently harvested the equivalent of more than 700 kg. per ha. on land that was very degraded and which produced less than 200 kg. in the past. More comprehensive official measurements were to be provided in December, 2012.

Only during a longer-term intervention will one be able to see if the technique will continued to be practices on a sustainable basis on larger planted areas per household so as to achieve significant impact in the economy of farming households. Continued stringing together short- term emergency style projects will not be the ideal way to address the issue.

In all countries, programs shifted from CFW to Cash for Training (CFT) and non-conditioned CTs with the arrival of rains and the advent of the planting season. In Mali and Niger, CFW was followed by non-conditioned CTs. In Burkina Faso, CFW gave way to two distributions of CFT in exchange for female household members participation in training sessions on essential hygiene practices. Unfortunately, the training consisted of only two 20-30 minute sessions held just before cash distributions were made. Given the short duration, it may be unlikely that enough follow up can be provided to ensure that messages are not only learned, but practiced.

Blanket feeding was carried out as an additional safety net for particularly vulnerable segments of the population. Through. a regional grant from the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) ACF provided supplemental feeding to children between the ages of 6-23 months of age in Burkina Faso, Mali and Mauritania. The project represented a variety of interventions that were generally called “blanket feeding”. In fact, only the supplemental feeding in Banamba, Mali represented true blanket feeding . That implemented in the other two countries was actually targeted feeding of children showing signs of MAM, or from very poor and poor families (in the case of Burkina Faso). There was also divergence in terms of the duration of such feeding. Burkina Faso made provision for 6 months of distribution, Mali for 4 months and Mauritania for 3 months. The project document presented to SIDA does not elaborate in any detail the technical rationale for the difference in duration and the timing of the intervention.

Standard true blanket feeding protocol calls for feeding to be carried out during the hunger season as a preventive measure to reduce the risk of children falling into a state of malnutrition. In Mali, ACF’s window, September – January (subsequently modified to occur from December – March) missed the 2012 hunger period (June-September). Distribution in Burkina Faso occurred during the peak period and somewhat beyond (July – December).

Regardless of the timing, the impact of the supplemental feeding did have a positive impact on preventing spikes in SAM in Burkina Faso and Mauritania as documented by SMART surveys in

those two countries. Since feeding was only just about to start in Banamba, Mali at the time of the evaluation, no information was available on that program’s impact.

In addition, Burkina Faso and Mauritania incorporated feeding for pregnant and lactating women (PLW), while Mali made no such provision. Such a provision is generally part of a blanket feeding protocol. Nevertheless, the project document did not address the rationale for the inconsistency.

The complications in Mali over confusion regarding a requirement to obtain SIDA’s authorization for a single source procurement from the only manufacturer/supplier of MISOLA in the country. The chain of authorization ran through WARO, ACF/Madrid and ultimately ACF/Paris and took three months (September until November) until SIDA acknowledged that the arrangement was acceptable. In hindsight, essential time could have be saved (considering the time-bound nature of carrying out blanket feeding during the peak of the hunger season) the chain of inquiry should have gone directly through the concerned contracting office which signed the grant agreement with the donor, ACF/Paris, to obtain the necessary waiver. The other offices in the chain could have been adequately copied on all correspondence and response.

Not related to human survival, but very much related to maintaining food security in the Sahel, ACF/Chad provided 35 kg. of fodder per month for five months (March-July) to 4,000 vulnerable households which possessed 4 or fewer animals that they were unable to feed. What was not available in Burkina Faso to the evaluator was objectively verifiable information (PDM reports or their equivalent) that confirm the status of the beneficiaries livestock after distribution ended in order to determine the effectiveness of the intervention.

Nutrition Mindful that during emergencies, levels of malnourishment among children in vulnerable households spike significantly above already high levels during annual hunger seasons, ACF implemented its institutional core competency, the screening, identification, referral and treatment of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition (SAM). Along with those intervention, ACF provided capacity building to strengthen the performance of counterpart personnel nutrition centers and health centers, as well as sensitization and training to mothers in essential practices involving nutrition, hygiene and sanitation. Generally stated, ACF nutrition teams effectively carried all interventions as planned.

Nutrition staff have worked with their counterparts in the nutrition centers to strengthen their capacity to faithfully and efficiently implement generally accepted treatment protocols so that nutrition treatment centers meet Sphere Standards for the treatment of severely malnourished children. While time did not permit visits to but only one or two health/nutrition centers in each country, nor a review of the performance of individual centers, roll-up data for ACF’s nutrition program was available from official monthly reports submitted by each nutrition center and aggregated by health district. Recuperation rates ranged from 87.2% and 96.6%.

Table 4: Nutrition Treatment Achievements for SAM against Sphere Standards Category SPHERE Low Month High Month Cummulative Standard Healing < 75% Mali8 n/a n/a 82.1% Niger 87.2% 96.6% 90.8% Burkina Faso 66.7% 98.2% 89.4% Chad 63.6% 88.0% 78.5% Mortality < 10% Mali n/a n/a 0.9% Niger 2.6% 11.9% 7.2% Burkina Faso 3.7% *33.3% 16.7% Chad 3.1% **12.6% 6.6% Abandonment < 15% Mali n/a n/a 9.6% Niger 0% 3.6% 1.4% Burkina Faso 0% 7.14% 2.9% Chad 6.4% 16.6% 12.3%

* Note: the cause of the spike in mortality in Burkina Faso occurred during the rainy season and immediately after, a period when many families refused to bring their malnourished children to the treatment centers (CREN) so as not to conflict with field work. This lead to late arrivals and elevated deaths during the first 24 hours after arrival. ** Note: A spike in mortality to 23% at Therapeutic Nutrition Centers in July contributed to the high level.

Mauritania’s performance was less successful, essentially owing to significant institutional and human resource weaknesses in the nation’s health sector. According to a recent external evaluation of ACF/Mauritania’s overall emergency response, only 65% of CRENAS supported by ACF met the above mentioned SPHERE standards for acceptable treatment. 20% of centers achieved an “alarming” level of low achievement (healing of <50%, mortality > 15%, and abandonment > 25% . Despite ACF’s completion of actions established in the work plan, the extremely weak capacity of Mauritanian health sector personnel and the structural/organizational weaknesses of the sector conspired against significant quick impact. Those weaknesses will not be effectively addressed by stringing along short-term emergency interventions.

Aside from problems in Mauritania, ACF’s nutrition interventions in the other countries visited has been effective in supporting the health sector in achieving all SPHERE standards for the treatment of SAM. While mortality rates met targets (except in Burkina Faso), there is still considerable room for improvement. The Director of the Mayahi, Niger hospital where a Therapeutic Nutrition Center functions acknowledged that getting treatment to children on time is a major challenge. The highest mortality is among children who are brought for nutrition treatment when malnutrition is the most serious and when complications have already set in. Identifying the children while still in the community and motivating caregivers to use the service provided by the health sector need to be strengthened. Also, the health system’s ability to assist

8 Note: Data was only available for nutrition activities in Kita, but not Gao.

families in transporting their sick children to treatment centers is essential. In this regard, ACF has put its own vehicles at the disposal of the hospital when its two ambulances are unable to respond. The question going forward is: how can it be sustained without ACF’s direct intervention?

It should be noted that abandonment was highest from June to November, possibly associated with seasonal migration during the hunger season (June-August) and the harvest (September- October) among agriculturalists. In Chad, the spike may be due to seasonal nomadic household movement. This was a continuing challenge cited by health workers for which they and ACF will have to work together on devising schemes that facilitate mothers’ adhering to the treatment protocols prescribed for their children.

Active/pro-active screening is being conducted by Relais Communautaires - Community Health Promoters (RC). ACF has, and continues to be involved in their training and monitoring of their activities. The RCs are proving to be effective in screening children on a regular basis in their villages, identifying those thought to be malnourished, and referring them to treatment centers. However, as their value and effectiveness is reinforced within the health sector, there is a pressure on the part of RCs to be remunerated for their service to their communities and the health sector. Within the system they are volunteers and thus are not part of the health sector’s payroll. Different forms of “motivational” support are provided from district to district and among countries (per diems for assistance at training events, T shirts, are just two examples). The issue is unresolved and a work in progress.

In all countries treatment was accompanied by sensitization and training of both participating mothers and health/nutrition center teams. At all monthly sessions in which the status of children is controlled and supplemental food is distributed, sensitization and training is given on essential health, hygiene and nutrition practices. Within that scope, on-site cooking demonstration using locally obtainable products is conducted to build awareness of dietary diversity using nutritious products. Training usually lasts from 20-45 minutes.

Sensitization and training is carried out with the objective of changing knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) in a way that will contribute to the improved health and welfare of the family, but, most importantly to the proper nutrition and health of children. Unfortunately, however, the time-on-task is limited and limited to the brief time that women visit the nutrition centers.

Besides a long-term concerted training policy, changing KAP requires a more dynamic approach which involves extensive activity in villages and homes. All nutrition centers count on the collaboration of a network of RCs. While they could, in principle, be tapped to carry out sensitization, training and promotion in villages, their primary task, as defined by government policy, is to carry out nutritional screening and referrals of children suspected of being malnourished to nutrition centers for further evaluation and treatment.

Changing KAP involves solving problems as well as transmitting information/lessons. A case in point would involve mothers not practicing certain hygiene practices for lack of water at a reasonable distance; or of not being able to treat water for consumption for lack of income with which to buy chlorine. At some point achieving impact shifts from transmitting information to

working with households and community leaders to addressing access to water or increasing household disposable incomes to meet the cost of essential practices.

In all countries ACF has actively supported health districts in managing their stocks of essential products. ACF has provided technical assistance to nutrition center personnel on management of essential stocks involving storage, record keeping and requisitions. As a contingency buffer, ACF maintained a reserve stock of essential products that were dispensed on a loan basis to health districts/nutrition centers when the official supply chain faced gaps. Behind the scenes, ACF staff kept UNICEF (the technical advisor to the health ministries’ central pharmacies) advised of pipeline status and lobbied for remedial measures when such were required. This support was carried out effectively and highly appreciated by health sector counterparts.

While recognizing ACF’s strong support for the “prise en charge” (PEC) of severely malnourished children, the director of the Mayahi, Niger Hospital wondered why ACF wasn’t doing more to address moderate acute malnutrition (MAM). He mentioned that supplemental feeding to moderately malnourished children did exist until mid-2011 in 7 CSIs. Then funding ended and the program ceased. In his opinion, prevention of severe malnutrition must begin with and be built upon efforts to reduce moderate malnutrition, with the first objective being to ensure that moderately malnourished children do not slip further into severe malnutrition.

ACF has addressed malnutrition through an integrated approach which includes interventions in the areas of WASH (“WASH in Nutrition”) and Food Security. DFID funding enabled ACF to carry out the program in Burkina Faso, Niger and Mauritania from July 2012 to March 2013 (9 months).

Through “Wash in Nutrition” ACF planned to provide health centers with a minimum WASH package which entailed water points rehabilitation, WASH and hygiene kit distribution, education & sensitization. Water infrastructure would entail protected storage systems for drinking water, chlorination of water, soap supplies, furnishings and hand washing and laundry areas, and water point rehabilitation. Exit hygiene kits would be distributed to mothers at the conclusion of the treatment program of their children.

At the community level, hygiene kits were planned to be distributed to poor and very poor households which participated in cash transfer, warrant credit, and gardening activities. Through specific “hygiene sensitization campaigns”, community workers would help families to put in place and use the hand washing kits at household level. At the time of the evaluation none of the planned activities had been implemented. In all countries, ACF was still engaged in the procurement of kit materials and the contracting of service providers for infrastructure rehabilitation. Implementation was scheduled to begin in December. In Niger, however, some sanitation and hygiene training with health center personnel and community health workers were begun.

Integration of food security assistance has taken the form of “health gardens” in villages located in the health districts where nutrition treatment is carried out. Implementation was more advanced in Burkina Faso and Niger, while Mauritania had been in the sensitization and planning stages at the time of the evaluation.

Table 5: Health Gardens Country Sites Total Area Area/Garden # Beneficiaries Area/Household Burkina Faso 12 6 ha. 0.5 ha. 413 0.015 ha./HH Niger 18 16.72 ha 0.93 ha. Not specified TBD

Gardens are being established at nutrition centers, and in communities through women’s groups in Niger. While the gardens at the nutrition centers should serve a useful purpose in sensitizing mothers as to the value of gardening and for technical training, without concerted follow-up in the villages, there is not automatic guarantee that they will result in mothers going back to the villages to initiate gardening.

Whereas project participants in the villages were identified on the basis of women coming from poor/very poor families with children <5 years of age, participants did not necessarily come from among women whose children had undergone treatment for SAM in nutrition centers. Women’s Groups were voluntary and based on participants’ willingness to work together and available land at a reasonable distance. Therefore, the component cannot be strictly considered an integrated component of the PEC program. No data was easily available to determine what percentage of women participating in health gardens also had severely malnourished children attended to at nutrition centers. In any case, health gardens should be considered a valid attempt to address proper nutrition in general so as to contribute to preventing malnutrition.

The amount of surface area to be cultivated per household is projected to be quite limited. When the question was posed to food security staff in Niger as to what nutritional and/or financial impact production would have per household with the land available for cultivation (based on a pro-forma calculation and empirical data), no one could offer any quantifiable information. This did not appear to be the case in the four other countries as well. It behooves ACF staff to perform such an analysis to be sure that they understand the full extent of the projected nutritional and livelihoods impact achieved from the quality and quantity of micro-nutrient rich foods of participating households. If the benefits prove to be very marginal, one cannot mislead oneself to believe that the problem has been fully addressed for those families. Gardening and other agricultural production should be done at a scale that can provide households with an appropriate amount of micro-nutrient rich foods for consumption and/or impacts meaningfully on the economy of poor and very poor households. The universe of beneficiaries also needs to be scaled up progressively to be certain to reach all households at risk of having a child succumb to MAM and SAM. Once again, health gardens, and all agricultural projects are best suited to longer-term interventions where scope and sequence, as well as the quantity and quality of resources can be appropriately programmed.

Given the chronic/structural nature of the problem of health and nutrition in the countries of the region, the problem would be best addressed as a development problem, within a development time frame and dynamic, rather than short-term emergency operations. ACF is admirably doing its best to string together emergency projects of 6 to 9 months to keep its nutrition operations running. Mali, Niger, and Bukina Faso have developed, secured funding, and initiated multi- year integrated projects. This is an appropriate response the merits a redoubling of effort to raise donor awareness of the need to shift into longer-term programming and to interest them in funding such projects.

One should be mindful that development operations can more readily form the foundation for a shift into emergency response mode, with appropriate contingency planning, systems, procedures and human resource development than can emergency operations be transformed into development programs. That said, however, the development programming should be such that includes contingencies for fluidly shifting from development mode to emergency response when situations dictate; and personnel should be recruited, managed, and trained accordingly.

Recommendation 6: ACF/Spain should develop a multi-year, integrated proposal for development donors to convert emergency nutrition interventions in the 3 comunes in Kita (Mali) to multi-sector integrated approaches to preventing malnutrition. With this additional base, ACF will have an installed capacity to scale up to meet punctual emergency situations when they occur. Similarly, the other Sahelian CPs and their respective headquarters should redouble efforts to advocate with development donors for the approval of multi-year, integrated proposals to replace the series of short-term financing that those programs are currently obliged to rely on.

Recommendation 7: ACF should take its efforts to address micro-nutrient deficiency from assumption to empirical evidence. As a form of applied research, ACF should carry out a pro-forma analysis and systematic study of an optimum household model of gardening that will provide adequate levels/quantities of micro-nutrients for the prevention of micro-nutrient deficiency. Analysis should be carefully quantifiable based on particular realities of various climatic and cultural environments.

Rehabilitation/Resilience Rehabilitation activities were effectively carried out in all four countries. In Niger, seeds and fertilizer were distributed to the most vulnerable/poor from among those who received CT assistance (approximately 20%). The inputs were distributed on time for planting in June. While germination rates were favorable (90%+), and evaluation of the harvest was not completed at the time of the evaluation.

In addition, ACF/Niger supported the provision of secured credit/grain storage to a very small segment of the beneficiary population (33% of those who received seeds/fertilizer, and 8% of all CT beneficiaries) due to limited capital availability. ACF did not capitalize the credit component with funds from donors (DFID II and SDC), but rather relied on the available capital of its financial partner. The project, which is now in its second year, has been very well appreciated by the population in Mayahi and Keita. In fact, the demand for participation has more than doubled from 2011 to 1,856 farmers. Because of limited capital, and a conscious effort on the part of ACF and its financial partner (Union des Mutuelles d’Epargne et de Crédit, UMEC) to offer opportunities to the most willing farmers possible loans were limited. Grain stored under warrant increased to 192,421 kg. from 127,665 in 2011. On average, participating farmers stored

104 kg. of assorted grain (of their choosing) to secure a 4-month credit of CFA 11,292.9 For that, participants will pay CFA 1,016 in interest (9%) upon repayment of the principal. The store room of the village of Maissoura in Kanembakache was full to the four walls and ceiling.

In the project proposal, ACF claimed that from income-generating activities undertaken with 2011 micro-credits, participants were able to realize increased “incomes” of 15 to 20%. The claim was not backed up with objectively verifiable data that could be subject to financial review, nor were documents identified in the Mayahi office to substantiate the claim. Three warrant credit participants interviewed in Maissoura acknowledged placing between 50 and 30 kg. of millet for storage. With their small loans, which they had recently received (somewhere in the range from 3,400 to 6,400 CFA), one has begun selling sweet potatoes in the street and market while another is selling “galettes” (a type of fritter). The third bought food with her credit. An open forum was not an appropriate venue in which to probe base line household income, sales, margins or revenue generated, therefore it was impossible to even approximate what the micro-enterprise represented in terms of increased household income and impact on the food security/livelihoods of the participants. Closer, more rigorous small business and financial oversight will have to be given to the warrant credit project to objectively ensure that beneficiaries are actually enhancing their revenue, food security and livelihoods.

ACF/Niger had not considered discussing a longer credit repayment option (along the lines of the one-year loans offered by a similar project in Mali), so as to allow beneficiaries to take fuller advantage of the rise in grain prices during the course of a year. It is worth noting that holding millet for seven months (until July) when the market price is traditionally at its peak will yield participants a 60% higher net cash utility than if held only until April as per current terms (see Annex 8). Needless to say, merely helping households store grain for future consumption/sale provides even higher economic utility, without the inherent risk associated with managing a micro-enterprise.

One key to achieving sufficient livelihood/food security using warrant lending or grain storage will be scale. Storage of only 100 kg. of grain is only an initial and very small step toward creating household food security. Those amounts will have to be scaled up and managed within the scope of a total household economy involving improvements in production/productivity as well as an increase and grain storage infrastructure will have to be built to accommodate greater demand for space. Another economic factor that will have to be taken into account and addressed will be household debt. Too little is known with any specificity by ACF program staff about the scale and dynamics of household debt and the impact it plays on livelihoods, food insecurity and malnutrition. Until that is documented impactful solutions that are sustainable will be difficult to plan. Projects planned on hopes, assumptions and limited resources may prove to be more symbolic than effective at preventing food insecurity and malnutrition.

9 Data obtained from Mayahi Food Security Team data spreadsheet, “RECAPITULATIF DES DEPOTS WARRANTAGE” (date not specified)

Warrant credit was not part of rehabilitation/resilience packages offered in other countries. ACF/Mali does offer such assistance within the scope of its multi-year integrated development program in southern Kita Cercle.

Within the scope of a rehabilitation strategy, ACF/Burkina Faso offered two additional monthly non-conditioned CTs to beneficiaries with the expressed purpose of helping them pay off debt due, thus allowing them to retain more of their harvest for consumption and/or sale at a higher price at a later date. What was not available at the time of the evaluation is data on how much debt was actually paid down with the cash transferred and how households used the grain that was harvested, but not sold immediately to cover debts.

ACF/Chad assisted 790 of the most vulnerable households, many of which were headed by females, in replenishing their herds of small ruminants that they had lost in the wake of successive droughts. Three female goats were distributed to each family, with an appropriate number of males being allocated to villages for collective use in propagating herds. The project was still ongoing at the time of the evaluation. Therefore there was no updated information on the state of the animals, which should normally be monitored at six-month intervals after the delivery of the animals for at least a year after distribution. Unfortunately, a six-month emergency intervention will not be in operation when such a first follow-up is required. There is no confirmation at this time whether such follow-up will be scheduled to be performed by food security staff regardless of whether there will be follow-up support in this regard, but such is highly recommended for learning purposes should ACF need to implement similar assistance in the future.

Recommendation 8: CP annual plans and project plans should establish explicit and detailed means of integrating the various FS components with the Nutrition interventions to the same target universe of beneficiaries. The scope and sequence of interventions should be planned and articulated, so that they directly work together to contribute to increasing HH food security, that in turn should result in reduction in incidences and levels of malnutrition in the targeted universes/communities. This should entail the synchronization of targeting, promotion, technical assistance and resource provision.

\Monitoring Tools, Feedback Loops and Data Sharing

Systems and procedures exist for the preparation and submission of Activity Progress Reports from implementing staff in the field, to their respective national offices (program coordinators, chiefs of program and country directors) to the concerned headquarters. For regional projects negotiated with donors by WARO, those reports should be submitted to the regional office for its review and approval. Similarly, WARO keeps country programs advised of donor interest in funding projects on a regional basis and solicits inputs on how to frame project proposals.

WARO has not been established as part of a decentralized management structure, but rather as a resource and advocacy office. The Letter of Understanding among the ACF international

headquarters outlines WARO’s responsibilities, but not specific operational mechanisms. There is no formal agreement/codification of communications/reporting obligations (monthly SITREPS and, APRs, among others) between country programs and WARO.

According to WARO staff, submission of APRs, PDMs, Cash Transfer Reports, and inputs for regional project proposals tend to be late. Country program personnel claim that staff shortages and over-work are behind any delays. CP staff also believe that requests for inputs into regional project proposals comes with insufficient advanced notice and deadlines that are very short. At least in the case of Mali during 2012, key staff vacancies (to be treated below) seriously impeded the CP from carrying out planning and reporting on a timely basis

WARO rightfully contends that SITREPS and APRs involving emergency operations are not merely reporting for reporting’s sake, but rather a way of sharing essential real-time information that can be used in making timely submission of funding appeals to donors as well for making mid-course corrections to programming and implementation. In the case of emergency projects, which range in duration of between 6 and 12 months, delays represent lost opportunities to make such corrections at moments when they could be most relevant and useful.

Both Mali’s and Niger’s CDs made note of WARO’s demand for quick information for drafting a proposal for funding from ECHO’s 2013 Humanitarian Implementation Plan (HIP), claiming the turn-around time was too short for good planning. However, out of fairness to WARO, all parties concerned should have been aware of ECHO’s planning, review and approval calendar. Both WARO and CPs need to be aware of standard timing for such a document and should be pro-active in carrying out the necessary planning on a timely basis. Hitting the window for such an important source of humanitarian funding should be on ACF’s calendar every year.

Admittedly, November/December is somewhat early for having a reliable handle on harvest data and levels/location of food insecurity. However, seasonal spikes in malnutrition have in the past, and will occur during the hunger season. To keep things simple, while awaiting more specific emergency information, ACF can foresee implementing safety net projects such as blanket feeding of children <24 months of age and PLW during the hunger season in all five countries. CFW can also be a safety net for very poor households while also serving to consolidate 2012 achievements in establishing productive infrastructure that requires several years of investment. By meeting ECHO’s funding schedule, ACF can ensure that it does not miss the hunger season window for providing safety net assistance, as was the case in Banamba, Mali in 2012.

WARO invested time and effort in putting in place common/standardized beneficiary targeting criteria and procedures based on HEA and outcome analysis. The criteria have been implemented by CPs and have been reflected in both regional proposals and those negotiated directly by CPs in concert with their respective international headquarters.

There were variations in individual CP project scopes and sequences within the same regional projects (i.e. duration of cash transfers made). Evidence was not readily available that WARO sought to harmonize operational specifics but rather made regional projects into funding “envelopes” into which each CP could place projects, as they have conceived them, for funding. There did not appear to be much in the way of feedback from WARO on the advisability,

appropriateness and cost-effectiveness of ACF/Mali continuing to attempt to carry out CFW in Kita for only two months as the planting season approached. The same held true to ACF/Mali’s decision to continue with BF during a time of the year (the fourth quarter of 2012) when BF is not normally employed.

There was no evidence that WARO provided feedback in order to reconcile two country approaches proposed by ACF/Niger and Mali to achieving the output of increasing the number of months of cereal needs covered at household level (Niger proposed warrant credit, while Burkina Faso proposed two additional months of cash transfers) within the scope of the DFID II grant. In that final regard, ACF/BF opted for additional cash transfer assistance due to its still nascent experience with warrant credit at the time of emergency operations. They, rightfully, decided that a 12-month emergency project was not an appropriate vehicle for introducing new modalities. Hopefully, parity in experience levels among country programs will occur over time with the support of regional learning.

The issue of who should provide technical feedback and guidance in matters such as that cited above is ambiguous – WARO or international headquarters (Paris and Madrid). CP staff and leadership are accustomed to receive and respond to the technical advisors of the international HQs and are not sure when they should expect the same from WARO and how they should respond – except when regional projects are concerned. Yet even in the case of contacts between WARO and CPs on regional project, there is a difference between monitoring and providing instructions on compliance with grant terms and work plans, and with providing feedback on appropriate and effective programming.

ACF/Paris and ACF/Madrid are in close contact and maintain exchanges on the workings of WARO. Yet one gets the impression that ACF/Spain is more comfortable than ACF/Paris on having WARO taken on responsibility for program monitoring and oversight that has traditionally been carried out by the international HQs. Until consensus is reached on that issue and is codified, the role of WARO in monitoring programming and implementation, and providing feedback to CPs (and expecting responses) will remain ambiguous. Establishing a decentralized management structure is complicated by the fact that three international HQs are involved in ACF programs in West Africa.

WARO’s leadership role in the Cash Learning Project (CaLP) represents a valuable resource that can go a long way in strengthening and harmonizing the implementation of cash transfers by the CPs in the region. It is unclear how CPs are using the resource (an ACF staff member is seconded to CaLP and works out of the WARO office) and what “signals”/directives are being sent to CPs from WARO and international HQs on how to take advantage of the resource and how to actually harmonize lessons learned from CaLP.

There does not appear to be many CP-to-CP exchanges, other than those that occur during conference calls that occurred every two months and at bi-annual meetings. When regional proposals were being drafted and negotiated with donors, heads of mission and/or their chiefs of program did not appear to have been in contact with each other to harmonize operational approaches. Undoubtedly, CP-to-CP contact (virtually and in person) will be essential for

establishing a regional modus operandi (common approaches, systems and procedures) to make the regional strategy document a working document.

Recommendation 9: ACF/HQs, in concert with WARO and CPs, should develop ASAP roles and responsibilities, MO and SOPs for information flows, critical analysis, programme decision-making, and feedback, that are, first and foremost, designed to support/enhance CP learning, productivity. and effectiveness. Recommendation 7 of the independent evaluation of WARO came to the same conclusion.

Effectiveness of ACF’s Regional Strategy in Responding to Recurrent Crises

As already noted, the problems addressed with regard to the 2012 drought crisis were not new. Food insecurity and malnutrition (and its seasonal spikes) are structural in nature in the five Sahelian countries evaluated. Addressing the occurrence will not prevent it from happening again. The ACF West Africa Operational Strategy 2011-2015 appropriately seeks to blend immediate emergency response with longer-term efforts to address the causes of the most serious consequences of emergency shocks, by strengthening the resilience of the poor and very poor who are most vulnerable to them.

The strategy is valid, and implementation has begun in all five countries evaluated. The challenge ahead is to operationalize a pro-active approach in addition to ACF’s proven capacity to react. A regional representative of ECHO noted that he felt that there are “two ACFs” – one that is represented by the WARO regional strategy document and articulated by the WARO staff in Dakar, and one which is represented by field operations in the country programs. In his opinion the quality of implementation does not always live up to what is written in the strategy and the project proposals. Specific countries were not cited as examples.

In this light, ACF will have to continue to work on operationalizing its strategy at the CP level, particularly that involving the integrated approach and the reinforcement of beneficiary resilience. The West African strategy articulates well its commitment to Linking Relief to Rehabilitation and Development (LRRD). Still lacking is an operationalization of “the path”, with a logical sequence and time-on-task of contemplated actions as well as causal relationships associated with those actions.

Whereas ACF’s regional proposals placed “mitigation” at the outset of the emergency (Phase I), the best time to lay the groundwork for true mitigation is pro-actively when there is no emergency. In this regard, ACF’s multi-year integrated rehabilitation and development projects (such as: PASA and PASAN V in Mali; and the AFD funded regional maternal-child nutritional security project in Burkina Faso) are examples of foundational programs for an effective emergency response capacity. It is easier to adjust the scope and scale up mitigation programming from a development base when an emergency occurs, than it is to put in place and implement mitigation/prevention measures from an emergency base that is short-term in nature and sometimes resource constrained.

In the face of structural food insecurity and seasonal risks of spikes in malnutrition which are magnified during periods of shock, ACF should build in safety net modalities of programming such as blanket feeding of children < 2 and PLW in geographical areas known to have high levels of food insecurity, as contemplated in the regional strategy under “protective, preventive and promotive social protection”. Whereas BF was contemplated and implemented as an emergency response in Mali, it should be adopted in all countries of the region on a multi-year timeframe within the framework of social protection. Targeting CFW/FFW activities that serve to build up productive infrastructure that create the basis of resilience among the poor and very poor will form the basis of mitigating the effects of shocks when they occur. On-going BF and CFW/FFW at the time of shock can be readily scaled up to respond to increase in food insecure population. When those safety nets are in place, there will be less risk of missing critical response windows while planning and operational gearing up takes place.

Needless to say, when an emergency occurs and time and human resources are at a premium, it is important to keep response modalities simple and direct. The first humanitarian principle is to “save lives”. Quickness and punctuality are the most important. With on-going mitigation and development projects in place, there is less need to “push the square peg through the round hole” by trying to plan and implement complex CFW/FFW activities that require more time for planning and set-up than is available at the moment of crisis.

AFC International currently has a policy of developing Emergency Preparedness and Response Plans (EPRP) at the country programme level. A comprehensive tool kit is available to guide CPs in the development of their respective plans. In addition, the Emergency Response Pools provide technical assistance to CPs in the development of EPRPs. The documents for the five CPs evaluated were not provided to the evaluators as part of their documents package nor were the documents cited by CP staff during the course of field work. The evaluators have been informed that Burkina Faso has, or is in the process of developing one. To facilitate efficient emergency interventions to scale, it is important the EPRPs contain detailed planning for how on-going safety net programmes and development projects can and will be adapted/scaled up to mitigate food insecurity and nutritional deficiencies of affected populations under foreseeable scenarios.

Recommendation 10: If they haven’t already done so, all CPs should develop EPRPs, and they should outline, in operational terms, how on-going programs (especially safety nets) can be scaled up as transitional/mitigation assistance. The plans should be updated periodically (particularly as programming evolves) and subjected to internal review by WARO and HQs.

Advocacy

ACF, particularly WARO and Spain, were highly effective in carrying out biomass mapping/analysis in the lead-up to the 2011-2012 drought, and to advocate early and vigorously within the humanitarian cluster mechanism and with donors for a timely response. In the wake of mixed signals from FEWSNET as to the scale and scope of the emergency, ACF stood

steadfast with like-minded agencies such as OCHA and WFP to press the seriousness of the problem. Those two U.N. organizations, as well as the SAP in Mali were clear in their praise and appreciation for ACF’s action. A word of caution is advised, however. Effective and respective advocacy must be backed up with quality operational capacity at the CP level and by objectively verifiable results (recall the ECHO commentary about “two ACFs”). ACF must be mindful that building operational capacity is significantly more complicated and difficult than building advocacy capacity. The case in point is the difficulty that ACF HQs in Spain and France have had in staffing the Mali and Chad missions.

Nevertheless, CPs were quite successful in advocating directly with donors, in concert with their respective headquarters, their need for resources in support of programming in the areas of nutrition, food security and WASH, as evidenced by the numbers of grants successfully negotiated and obtained by each CP. This will be covered below under fundraising.

Integration of Lessons Learned

Staff turn-over, particularly in Mali and Chad, along with “thin’ staffing and demands on staff time conspired to prevent CP staff from studying lessons learned from the multiple evaluations of prior emergency responses from around the world. Even the evaluators were hard-pressed to read and study in any depth the various evaluation documents from around the world while keeping abreast of a very large number of programming, monitoring/statistical, and reporting documents that were available at the CP offices.

There is a need for some way to “digest” and synthesize the key lessons that are most relevant to the contexts of the West Africa country programs for their “consumption” and adaption. To a certain extent, ACF’s support for CaLP through a seconded professional working out of the WARO office performs that function with regard to cash transfers. The advisor has been frequently present in the countries of the region and in contact with ACF (along with all other CaLP partner programs) to conduct training and technical assistance. Through those activities are lessons learned synthesized and prioritized for adaption.

In terms of overall emergency response, a dedicated learning advisor could act as the same type of resource as the CaLP advisor, building upon, adapting and disseminating the work being carried out by the organization’s worldwide Emergency Response Learning Project. A logical follow-up would be for such an advisor to provide TA to CPs in the development and up-dating of their EPRPs.

In that light, learning facilitation might be best located in WARO in support of the CPs.

Recommendation 11: ACF should consider creating a regional post of “learning and application” advisor whose role will be to “digest” and synthesize lessons from other operations, and to devise, in concert with the ACF Emergency Response Learning Project, headquarters and regional technical advisors, and CDs, application opportunities within the scope of CP strategies/work plans, EPRPs and project plans.

Emergency Response Systems

Human Resources

The program management and human resource structure followed standard lines of ACF. The chain of command/management (in most cases international personnel) consisted of, in order of hierarchy: • Country Director • Technical Coordinator (Head of Programs) • Department Heads (also known as Department Coordinators – Administration, Logistics, Finance and Human Resources) and Program Heads (Nutrition/Health, Food Security and Livelihoods and WASH) • Heads of Field Offices (also known as Field Coordinators and Technical Coordinators in Chad) • Field Program Heads (Nutrition/Health, Food Security and Livelihoods, and WASH; also known as Heads of Project in Mali)

The structure is rational and, if properly managed, facilitates adequate control of all facets of program management.

The quality of planning, implementation and monitoring/reporting was influenced to a great extent on the continuous presence (or lack of presence in some cases) of qualified international personnel in key posts during the course of the emergency. Staffing of the key positions outlined above was complete in Niger and Burkina Faso. Mali and Chad, however, experienced significant difficulties in maintaining positions consistently staffed.

Both HQs have committed the organization to a process of nationalizing key management positions at the mission level. In addition, ACF/France has embarked upon a “New Deal”, which has as its primary objective to delegate more management responsibility to operation teams in the field missions and in the field offices within missions. Both policies are designed to improve the depth of country specific knowledge that will contribute to more effective programming and to create a stable foundation of human resources upon which to build longer-term programming for resilience and timely relevant responses to emergencies when they occur.

The Niger and Burkina Faso missions have been fortunate to have stable leadership (each with approximately 3 years of tenure in their posts) under experienced CDs who have been dedicated to seeking out and hiring qualified national professionals to fill technical posts in the national offices and most key posts in the field offices. Niger has been particularly fortunate to have a 15-year ACF veteran as CD. His in depth knowledge of the region, particularly that of Mali and the border region with Mali have been highly regarded by the members of the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) as it responds to refugee arrivals in the face of political upheavals and insecurity in northern Mali. Both CDs in Niger and Burkina Faso have demonstrated strong leadership skills, fomenting team work, cooperation and accountability among staff.

The field offices in Keita and Mayahi in Niger were entirely staffed with national professionals and support staff. The Field Coordinator in Mayahi came on board with a long professional

40 history. His has demonstrated political astuteness and sensibility in his relations with local authorities at the prefecture and local levels, keeping them informed and engaged in ACF’s programming and leveraging their engagement to ensure for effective collaboration of local authorities and government technical offices in support of project implementation. The Program Heads for Nutrition/Health and Food Security also evidenced appropriate levels of experience and skills necessary for project management.

In the Niger national office, the Technical Coordinator/Head of Programs is an international staff member, while all Department/Program Heads are staffed with national professionals. No turn- over in key positions was reported for the period of emergency operations. Various members of the Mayahi office acknowledged that they had little prior experience in working within an emergency mode of operations/time frame, but managed to learn to adapt on the job. That probably contributed to what appeared to WARO as a lack of urgency on the part of the Niger mission in participating in the planning of regional response proposals. Yet learning-on-the-job did not appear to have a lasting material effect on ACF/Niger’s response based on the number of nationally generated emergency grants, anchored by three WFP grants for CT and supplemental feeding for moderately malnourished children.

Burkina Faso has put in place a recruitment policy which calls for a national deputy to be assigned to each post of head of programme or project. In particular, the policy targets all Technical Coordinator posts. The objective is to have adequate staff to face the work load and to develop a cadre of personnel primary officers or to assume responsibilities when new posts are established. This even holds for the posts of Head of Programmes and Country Director. In this way institutional memory is better retained. The deputies are recruited on the basis of experience and skills necessary to exercise the responsibilities and authority of deputy in all of it facets. . The policy is feasible owing to the competitive level of national salaries. With no deadline specified for phasing over those positions from the international to national professionals,staff are free to concentrate on capacity building, learning, and experience accumulation at an appropriate pace.

Burkina Faso experienced a period of turn-over among “field nutrition supervisors’ owing to their frustration on the part of the staff members with regard to their salary in relation to the responsibilities stated in the job descriptions. The matter was rectified on a timely basis by changing the job descriptions and job titles to “nutrition project manager” and by entrusting those holding the positions to full management responsibility. Appropriate job training was carried out for newly recruited staff in accordance with the new job profile.

In contrast, the Chad mission experienced a higher level of staff turn-over and position vacancies during the emergency operations. The problem started at the “top” with a change in CD in March, 2012, precisely at a crucial moment in needs assessment, response planning and project initiation. However the incoming CD had an overlap with his predecessor between March 23 an May 8, 2012. He was expected to lead the roll-out ACF/France’s policy of decentralized management (“New Deal”).

The particularly important position of Nutrition/Health Department Head in N’Djamena was vacant during most of 2012, particularly during the crucial early months of the emergency. The

post was filled “ad interim” by two international staff members on temporary duty during four months between 25 June and 23 November. In all six expatriate professionals were sent to Chad on temporary assignment to fill vacancies as Food Security Project Manager in Mao, Head of Logistics in N’Djamena, and Head of Finance in N’Djamena. Un-attractive living and working conditions, particularly in the field offices seem to have been a determining factor in making recruitment and retention of international personnel difficult.

All the while, national professions were not assigned to management positions, except in Administration. There is a shortage of qualified/experienced Chadian professionals, and those available for duty are in high demand from other humanitarian organizations – notably United Nations agencies which offer the best salaries. A number of those management positions have been filled with expatriate African professionals, notably from Niger.

The Mali mission was particularly negatively affected by high staff turn-over and prolonged vacancies in key management positions throughout the emergency. At the heart of the problem was a lack of leadership at the CD level. At the time of the emergency the CD left his post on 22 June 2012. For the first three critical months of 2012, when emergency planning was underway and political tensions and insecurity mounted until a March coup d’etat, the CD also occupied the post of Interim Chief (“Referente”) of Food Security. At the time of his departure, the northern part of the country was facing insecurity which forced ACF/Mali to relocate the venue of implementation of emergency drought emergency response from Gao/Ansongo to Kita and Banamba/Koulikoro.

During the subsequent four months (until 27 October) four interim/acting CDs drawn from various sources formed a revolving door or leadership, each for a period of about one month. Such short-term rotations are not conducive to effective management. During emergency operations there is no time for orientation and the knowledge acquisition required of a manager. Implementation and reporting controls weaken and staff morale could suffer if leadership is not exerted.

A permanent CD only came on board in November and was in his post for only two weeks at the time of the evaluation. In light of the fact that he was arriving from outside of the West Africa region, the new CD did not believe that his orientation and briefings, which were very brief, provided sufficient information about WARO and the modus operandi that exists (or should exist) between the regional office and the mission. The chain of communications and responsibilities still seemed somewhat unclear.

In response to an ACF/Spain mandate, key management posts had been nationalized by way of a relatively hasty process in 2009. Many national project managers were promoted to coordinator positions. Most were still inexperienced in matters of management and weak in planning skills. Many found it difficult to translate proposal drafting with the operational planning necessary for effective implementation. It would appear that recruitment/promotion could have been more rigorous and that on-the-job capacity building, coaching and mentoring was inadequate. By late 2011, it appears that their performance was not meeting the expectations of HQ and steps to retrace some steps in the nationalization process were initiated.

The key position of Technical Coordinator (Head of Programs) turned over in February, 2012 and six months later in August, only to remain vacant until the time of the evaluation. An additional four out of six other management positions changed hands during emergency operations. The Administration/Finance Coordinator reverted back to an international position in July (with the staff member also holding down the position of Acting-CD during October). The Logistical Coordinator post was vacated in July, remaining vacant up through the period of the evaluation (filled by a member of the Emergency Pool during September and October).

In Kita, to where emergency response operations under the ECHO Mitigation and OFDA projects had been relocated after suspension of most activities in Gao/Ansongo, the key position of Head of Programs fell vacant at the end of March and was not filled until May, precisely at a time when important planning and decision-making was underway for the initiation of activities under the ECHO Mitigation CFW project. The new Program Head also took on the dual role of Head of Field Office in August. Technical personnel for food security, nutrition/health, and WASH did double duty by managing operations in the new emergency programming areas of the cercle while continuing to manage an on-going multi-year integrated project in the southern part of the cercle (PASA).

To fill the voids created by staff turn-over in Mali, 10 surge support missions were conducted by members of the ACF/Spain Emergency Pool, as well as some temporary duty undertaken by colleagues from ACF/France between April and October of 2012 (see Annex 8 for list of all surge support missions conducted in the region). Ranging in duration from 8 to 25 days, each, the first 7 missions between 25 April and 20 May, were made to assist the mission to development its emergency response strategy in the northern part of Mali. 4 missions were conducted between June and September to fill gaps in staffing and to carry out monitoring of program operations.

Both ACF HQ Emergency Pools invested human resources and time in the region in support of field missions, most importantly in Mali where the human resource base was perhaps the weakest and the situation most in flux. Unlike how ACF/France used its Emergency Pool to augment operational teams in western Cote d’Ivoire to jump start emergency operations there, most emergency pool staff time during the Sahel emergency was dedicated to strategy and project development, while relatively less served to augment temporarily short-handed staff. The Mali mission could have benefited more from a more concerted use of emergency pool resources to augment its operational capacity amid numerous key staff vacancies and weaknesses displayed by some national staff. The Burkina Faso mission has also benefited from Emergency Pool support for similar strategy development (February 2012) and needs assessment in response to an influx of Malian refugees (June-July 2012).

In Mali and Chad, salary levels and remuneration packages did not appear to be major factors in recruiting and retaining qualified staff. In fact, in Mali national professional salaries were reasonably competitive with even ACF’s international salaries. Working conditions, competition for scarce talent, and an environment that offered opportunities for professional creativity and development seemed be influencing factors.

Emergency pools from the Paris and Madrid cooperated in lending human resources to start emergency operations in the region. To a certain extent, ACF/Paris has provided some assistance to Madrid in identifying qualified francophone candidates for recruitment when such were not readily available to Madrid’s human resource department. Nevertheless there seems to be considerable room to further develop systematic communication and cooperation between those two headquarters, as well as London and New York on human resource management and development policies, systems and procedures.

The more operations are financed with short-term emergency funding, the more frustrating it has been on mission staff, particularly national technical and support professions, who wonder if their work and positions will continue beyond the 6-12 months for which funding is available. This, in turn, can adversely affect ACF’s ability to recruit and retain talented staff. With job insecurity and a concentration on the short-term completion of activities also comes a weakening of motivation to think strategically and creatively of ways to solve problems of food insecurity/malnutrition and to create capacities for resilience in ways that require more time and resources. Burkina Faso presently hires those in leadership position as full time staff (indefinite contract), even if financing has been fully secured. This obviates the need to dismiss staff

Recommendation 12: During an emergency, program leadership (CD, PC and Admin/Finance Chief) is the key to effective management and success. Those posts should never be vacant. Accordingly, ACF/HQs should ensure that surge support is provided to fill those posts (one staff member per post) for the full period until (and shortly after) a full-time replacement is hired and on board. In the case of emergency responses, the HR departments of all concerned headquarters should carry out a systematic process of information sharing and management support to meet each other’s recruitment and staffing needs. When warranted, even the temporary sharing of surge personnel should be considered.

Recommendation 13: ACF/Burkina Faso’s experience with national staff deputies should be studied for lessons to be learned and replication as outlined in the Best Practice Table in Annex 2. To the extent that the practice is considered viable in each national context, ACF/Spain and France should pursue strategies to team international and national staff in key leadership posts. The specific posts would be determined by policies enacted by the concerned headquarters. The policy should be implemented within the scope of a reasoned and structured human resource development strategy to be carried out over time with no fixed deadline for completion. Rigorous recruitment standards, tangible career opportunities, a competitive compensation packages, as well as close mentoring/training should be part of the HRD process.

Logistics

Missions in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso have in place adequate logistical support to carry out their programming with reasonable efficiency. The Chad Mission, on the other hand was viewed

to have inadequate infrastructure at the Mao sub-office. Office and staff residence conditions were considered by the evaluator to be inadequate for “minimum (working and living) comfort”. Radio equipment is less than adequate to maintain appropriate levels of staff security while circulating in the area. Much of the vehicle fleet in Chad is rented due to the nature of financing for short-term emergency operations. The vehicles are old and less than optimal for reliable field travel. The rented vehicles in Mao are not all outfitted with VHF radios (only four in the mission have such equipment).

In all countries, staff and property security is taken very seriously and ACF standard systems and procedures are strictly practiced. CDs, sub-office heads and security focal points stay on top of all developments and react properly to situations as they occur.

With donor funding, reserve stocks of essential medicines/supplies have been maintained by the missions in support of nutrition programs that support severe acute malnutrition centers. The stocks have been effectively used to bridge temporary breaks in the supply chain run through the national health systems (national pharmacies) and managed by UNICEF.

Procurement appears to be managed efficiently. No material shortages of supplies and equipment could be noted. Only one problem was noted which involved ACF/Mali’s wish to carry out a single-source procurement of a fortified blended food, MISOLA, for its blanket feeding program in Ansongo. A round-about process of soliciting a waiver from SIDA which passed through, WARO, ACF/Spain and ACF/France took nearly three months to obtain the waiver at a time when effective BF should have been time sensitive. The mission had not considered ACF’s and SIDA’s policy of competitive procurement, nor did it take time to specify in the project proposal the fact that MISOLA was locally produced by one manufacturer in Mali, making a case for the cost-effectiveness of purchasing the product through single-source procurement, which was justifiable under SIDA’s procurement regulations. Time could have been saved if: a) mission staff had shown more foresight in making the necessary specification in the project proposal; b) WARO staff responsible for drafting the proposal had brought the matter to the attention of the mission during the drafting; and c) the mission would have opened up more a direct line of communication with the donor through ACF/France, the contract holder.

Recommendation 14: Procurement rules and regulations should be taken into account when planning project interventions, as they may affect the timing of activities. Where exceptional procurement arrangements are required, they should be carefully and prominently noted in the project proposal and the grant negotiating office should make arrangements for necessary waivers to donor procurement policies during the grant negotiation process.

Coordination

In the four countries visited for the evaluation ACF participates in humanitarian clusters and other humanitarian coordination bodies. In Chad ACF co-chairs the Food Security Cluster, while in Burkina Faso ACF is co-leader of the Nutrition Sector along with UNICEF, as well as a

member of the Humanitarian Country Team for nutrition. In Mali, members of the staff participate in all clusters, but staffing turn-over, particularly at the leadership level, has resulted in a rather passive participation. The Food Security Cluster Lead (WFP) in Mali made particular note of the frequent changes in participation of ACF representatives at meetings of that cluster. Nevertheless WFP expressed appreciation for ACF’s recent participation in the 2013 Consolidated Annual Appeal (CAP) process. Though it has not assumed any leadership role in any of the clusters functioning in Niger, ACF is consistently present and active in their meetings and activities. As already noted, the CD is one of three NGO members of the Humanitarian Country Team. His extensive knowledge of the region, particularly of Mali, has been very highly regarded and appreciated by members of the HCT.

At the regional level, WARO has developed a very good reputation among the humanitarian coordination bodies. ACF’s regional nutrition advisor has been cited as a member of the Nutrition Cluster who has carried considerable weight among its members. ACF’s participation in regional food security coordination also received favorable acknowledgement, while ACF’s participation in WASH coordination was cited as, perhaps, requiring some strengthening. ACF WARO staff were prominent contributors to the 2013 Sahel Regional Strategy document produced by the U.N. under OCHA.

Among donor representatives with regional representation in Dakar, WARO enjoys an excellent reputation.

ACF’s experience in and commitment to biomass mapping as a drought early warning tool received particular recognition at the regional level. It has also been praised for its vigorous diffusion of mapping results in late 2011 and its campaign to generate early emergency response. Both international HQs provided the country missions with proprietary funding advances to jump start implementation of relief operations and to maintain in place stocks of essential medicines and supplies to support nutritional services in all four countries.

Both HQs actively and adequately supported their respective missions in identifying donors and advocating for funding of response projects. More will be said about this below when discussing fundraising.

Communication

Communication between the Paris and Madrid HQs, along with the London and New York HQs essentially revolved around the WARO steering committee. Communications with country missions was handled by Paris and Madrid bilaterally with their respective charges, particularly with regard to programme management and contractual obligations associated with donor grant agreements. Communications on technical support were handled for the most part bilaterally between CPs and their respective HQs. This made harmonizing technical approaches difficult, except in the cases of regional grants developed by WARO. However, there was communication and collaboration between the emergency pools of the two countries, particularly in support of the Mali and Niger CPs as it addressed the needs of Malian IDPs and refugees. France and Spain human resource departments also collaborated in identifying and referring francophone professionals for service in ACF/Spain’s missions.

Both HQs maintained close and regular communications with their respective CPs and followed their SITREPS closely.

Because WARO is not constituted/structured as a decentralized management entity, it does not have fluid and direct access to ACF international network executives on matters of harmonizing programming and management throughout the region. It has used informal contacts and communication flows to try to influence programming and management in between meetings of the steering committee..

Administration, Finance and Fundraising ACF was highly successful in identifying donors and negotiating grants for emergency response projects in the five affected countries (Annex 9). Over 22.8 million Euros was raised of which more than 16.6 million Euros (73%) was received from grants negotiated by the country missions in concert with their respective HQs, while nearly 16.2 million Euros (27%) were generated from regional grants negotiated by WARO. One aspect of the value-added of WARO has been considered its ability to raise resources on behalf of the CPs of the region. One ex staff member of WARO was even of the opinion that the “CPs could not have raised funds in such quantity and so quickly if they had to do so themselves”. While this was not the case, funds raised by WARO were not an insignificant contribution to the relief effort. Mauritania relied the most on regional funding (44%), while Mali and Niger relied less on WARO to raise funds on their behalf (13% and 14%, respectively). It is worth noting that ECHO funded ACF emergency projects both on a regional basis through WARO as well as bi-laterally with each CP through its national delegations. ECHO has announced that in 2013 it will provide funding only bi-laterally through its country missions within the scope of each mission’s HIP. This change of funding modality will force WARO and the ACF HQs to re-think how it covers the operating costs of the regional office with a reduced flow of grants (and overhead) passing through the regional office. ECHO did note that it valued the contributions that WARO makes to the quality of programming of the CPs and would be willing for country proposals to include a fair and appropriate budget provision for covering technical assistance and oversight provided by WARO to the CP. This will require a clear and objective analysis on the part of the WARO steering committee members, the WARO staff and the leadership of the CP as to the precise value-added of WARO to the effective operations of each mission. Results and outputs such as “harmonizing strategies and methodologies” will have to be defined with greater operational precision and CPs will have to practice real buy-in to the services rendered. At this moment one cannot concluded that all CDs share the same view of the value-added they receive from WARO. To some CDs, funding sources are a driving determinant of value to their programs. CDs do no necessarily believe that WARO is essential to their ability to raise funding for their programs (except in cases where donors explicitly state that they will only fund regional projects). All parties will have to devise a standard and objectively verifiable formula for valuing the support it will receive from WARO. If WARO were a part of a de-centralized management structure/system, the valuation of its services to country missions would be a bit easier. As it stands, one will have to determine from

where missions should receive technical and administrative support and oversight at the best value without redundancy.

Recommendation 15: ACF HQs, WARO and regional CDs should begin immediately a series of face-to-face meetings and virtual meetings to analyze, formulate and agree upon, in objectively verifiable terms, the value proposition of WARO to the country missions and the HQs that has the buy-in of all parties. The external evaluation of WARO echoed this recommendation.

Recommendation 16: A standard system for calculating and allocating a fair indirect cost value of those services rendered by WARO to CPs should be devised and used in all grant proposals to defray part of the costs of WARO’s operations, regardless of whether the grants are regional in nature. The responsible contracting party within the ACF network should actively and vigorously articulate to prospective donors the value added of WARO to programming quality and execution, and negotiate approval of that regional indirect cost budget line item in each grant.

Delays in project initiation do not appear to have been caused by systemic problems, but rather by delays in securing grant approval on the part of donors (case in point: OFDA’s delayed approval of CT funding for Kita until after October of 2012). Because grant agreements generally included provisions for a reasonable pre-dating of the start date of approved expenditures, ACF was able to advance internal funds for project initiation as soon as grant agreements were signed. It goes without saying that funding operations with numerous short-duration grants from multiple donors creates added work in terms of financial planning/budgeting, and accounting. It could also lead to liquidity gaps when program implementation passes from one donor to another. It would be ideal for ACF to deal with larger, longer-term grants, but such is not under the direct control of ACF. HQs, WARO and country missions have adequate systems in place to track and account for multiple grants and donors.

Capacity-building within an overall project strategy of sustainability In the area of nutrition, ACF is fully dedicated to building capacity of its government health partners to implement effectively the national protocols for the treatment of severe acute malnutrition. Presently ACF nutrition program budgets contain provisions for nutrition center staff subsidies. The missions have stated that progressively, the number of staff being paid from grant budgets is decreasing as gradually national health budgets are making provisions for them to be put on the ministries’ payrolls. This is, indeed, a positive development that needs to be reinforced in anticipation that funding nutrition treatment payroll support becoming less a priority for donors – particularly if such programs pass from emergency grants to development grants. ACF should seriously discuss with health ministry officials a forward-looking strategy and time table for absorbing all necessary human resources by national budgets. In addition succeeding in passing full implementation of nutrition treatment to national partners, ACF will

48 free human and financial resources to begin to undertake programs that address the problem of MAM in communities as a means of reducing the incidence of SAM that need to be treated in nutrition centers. CFW projects are developed with local community leaders and authorities to ensure their commitment to maintaining the productive infrastructure built through CFW. ACF/Burkina Faso has made noteworthy efforts to formally engage local leaders in this endeavor. Nevertheless, what can be accomplished within the scope of a 4-6 month intervention is quite limited. Consolidating gains in sensitization and organization of local stakeholders and beneficiaries to sustain effectively the infrastructure put in place can only be consolidated over several years. CP staff have expressed their commitment to such an effort.

Future Programming Considerations 1 Re-double efforts to identify donors willing and ready to provide multi-year rehabilitation and development funding so as to implement programs that truly have as their objectives the strengthening of HH and community resilience to the shocks of drought and other disasters that directly aggravate food insecurity and malnutrition among children. 2 Institutionalize annual safety net assistance that is timed and targeted to reduce the food gap that very poor and poor households experience during hunger seasons. Appropriate safety nets would be: blanket feeding of children < 24 months, PLW, the infirmed and the aged; and cash transfers or food assistance in the form of CFW/FFW and non-conditioned CTs. 3 Continue CFW/FFW programs in targeted communities to increase the amount of productive infrastructure to a level that will result in real and significant impact in HH economies, livelihoods, and food consumption. Within the scope of those projects, systems to sustain/maintain the infrastructure should be put in place and consolidated. 4 Continue incorporating warrant credit assistance to targeted HHs as a component of improving HH economies and food security. If necessary, ACF should consider seeking project funding to capitalize its financial institution partners so that meaningful coverage is achieved in relation to the scale of the need in targeting communities. ACF should also adequately budget for increasing the amount of grain storage infrastructure available to participating HHs so that they can take full advantage of available warrant credit. 5 ACF should consider undertaking rigorous applied research to investigate the nature, levels and form of HH debt taken on by households participating in food security and nutrition projects to devise approaches to addressing the problem and breaking the “vicious circle” of indebtedness that weighs on HH livelihoods and food insecurity. 6 Seek to more directly integrate the components of nutrition, food security and WASH so that beneficiary HHs of one program (particularly the nutrition component) are ensured participation in the other programs that could contribute solutions to the malnutrition that their children are experiencing. 7 Nutrition programs should be expanded in scope to begin focusing on addressing the problem of MAM in targeted villages as a means of pro-actively and truly reducing the incidence of SAM. MAM should be addressed through a dynamic and solution- oriented approach that takes time to change KAP and to provide HHs with the means

49 of closing their food gap. Addressing MAM will require a real integrated approach along the lines of PASA and PASAN V being implemented in Mali.

Summary of Key Conclusions 1) ACF carried out a timely and vigorous response to the 2012 drought emergency. Its public awareness building and lobbying campaign has been recognized as instrumental in contributing to mobilizing a timely and significant response.

2) The West African 2011-2015 Operational Strategy is entirely relevant to the organization’s operations in the region. Four of five Sahelian countries (ex Mauritania) have country strategy documents that, reflect the elements of the regional strategy. Nevertheless, more work needs to be undertaken to further operationalize the regional and national strategies to describe in clearer terms a workable “path” to linking the three phases of programming and to actually “integrate” nutrition/health, food security, and WASH programming (as opposed to simply “associating them” in the same project document) with the same beneficiaries/communities toward achievement of measurable objectives of improved food security and reductions in incidences of acute malnutrition.

3) WARO represents a valuable organizational resource whose role is still evolving. There is still a need to establish a workable modus operandi with HQs and the CPs based on buy-in on the part of those concerned parties built around a shared understanding and acceptance of WARO’s “value proposition”. Within that framework, standard operating procedures should be developed with regard to program planning, monitoring/reporting and on human resource management and development.

4) For the most part, ACF’s food security response built around cash assistance (CFW/CFT and non-conditioned cash transfers) was coherent with the needs of beneficiaries. Timing was important for the effectiveness of CFW. CFW was generally carried out on a timely basis to coincide with windows of need and opportunity for filling beneficiaries food gaps. In the case of Mali, however, choices were made to go forward with cash assistance as CFW when the window of opportunity was rapidly closing (the approach of the planting season) after emergency operations were transferred from Gao/Ansongo to Kita and Banamba. Out of a sense of compliance with the letter of the grant provisions, the program staff elected to rush CFW into implementation for an abbreviated period (only two months) when non-conditioned cash transfers would have been justified under the conditions of duress under which staff were operating. Similarly, when blanket feeding in Banamba was delayed until December, well beyond the critical hunger period and peak period of malnutrition spike, ACF nutrition staff elected to go forward nonetheless with a four-month BF of children < 24 months even though the timing would run counter to generally accepted protocols for that modality of assistance.

5) ACF’s signature nutrition programming was well-implemented and it amply met treatment protocol targets for curing, mortality and defaulting – as it customarily does. In that light, and considering that the problem of malnutrition (and food insecurity) in the region is structural and not just an emergency occurrence it is recommendable that the organization make a critical strategic reassessment of the program to determine if it should emphasize prevention more around addressing the root causes of acute malnutrition by investing more in community interventions over longer periods of time to reduce the numbers of children that need to be referred to treatment centers, As a way of

achieving that objective, more attention may need to be paid to addressing moderate acute malnutrition, which is not currently the attention of PEC. To this effect, the use of “safety nets” such as timed and targeted blanket feeding should be considered. Also sustained use of targeted CFW/FFW could also serve the purpose while consolidating food security achievements. Such an approach, including PEC (which is more a development concern than an emergency concern), will require identifying and securing more longer-term financing for integrated projects rather than short-term emergency financing.

6) Leadership stability and human staff turn-over were factors that governed the operational effectiveness and effectiveness of particular CPs. ACF/Mali suffered significantly from critical voids in leadership and key professional personnel at critical times during the emergency. Those voids could not be filled on a timely basis by ACF/Spain. Continuing to pursue a reasoned process of “nationalization” of key management positions is fundamental and should continue to be pursued. The approach employed by the Burkina Faso program should serve as a model and starting point.

Summary of Recommendations

1. If ACF/Mauritania has not developed a country program strategy, it should do so ASAP, and it should be aligned it with the 2011-2015 West Africa Strategy. WARO and the Madrid HQ should provide the country team with all necessary support and technical assistance.

2. Review of the current Country Program Strategy Documents, as well as the West Africa Regional Strategy and ACF International Strategy, should be a fundamental part of the orientation of all new staff members, particularly those in leadership. Review of those documents’ alignment with the regional and international strategies, and progress toward achieving their objectives, should be carried out regularly at the country and regional levels.

3. To obtain maximum food security/nutritional impact, cash and food assistance should:

a) be provided during the hungry season (“soudure”) and for its duration of the season; and b) if cash assistance is provided outside of the hungry season “window”, the effect that it is expected to generate should be explicitly acknowledged in advanced and worked toward during implementation..

4. Given that food insecurity and malnutrition will continue to be endemic and chronic in the region, ACF/WARO and country missions should incorporate timed and targeted safety net interventions (Cash/Food Assistance/ Blanket and Supplementary Feeding) in country strategies, annual work plans and donor solicitations regardless of whether an emergency situation exists or not..

5. To ensure that CFW assistance serves to equitably meet the food deficit for all beneficiary households, work norms should be developed that ensures that equitable assistance is provided to all beneficiary households on a per capita basis. Fill the food gap should be the primary concern, even over the construction of productive infrastructure. In this regard, policies and work norms should be adopted at a regional level, subject to specific arrangement made at the national level in concert with national authorities and/or the Food Security Cluster..

6. ACF/Spain should develop a multi-year, integrated proposals for development donors to convert emergency nutrition interventions in the 3 comunes in Kita (Mali) to multi-sector integrated approaches to preventing malnutrition. With this additional base, ACF will have an installed capacity to scale up to meet punctual emergency situations when they occur. Similarly, ACF/Niger and ACF/Spain should redouble efforts to advocate with development donors for the approval of multi-year, integrated proposals to replace the series of short-term financing that ACF/Niger is currently obliged to rely on..

7. ACF should take its efforts to address micro-nutrient deficiency from assumption to empirical evidence. As a form of applied research, ACF should carry out a proforma analysis and systematic study of an optimum household model of gardening that will provide adequate levels/quantities of micro-nutrients for the prevention of micro-nutrient deficiency.

Analysis should be carefully quantifiable based on particular realities of various climatic and cultural environments.

8. CP annual plans and project plans should establish explicit and detailed means of integrating the various FS components with the Nutrition interventions to the same target universe of beneficiaries. The scope and sequence of interventions should be planned and articulated, so that they directly work together to contribute to increasing HH food security, that in turn should result in reduction in incidences and levels of malnutrition in the targeted universes/communities. This should entail the synchronization of targeting, promotion, technical assistance and resource provision. ..

9. ACF/HQs, in concert with WARO and CPs, should develop ASAP roles and responsibilities, MO and SOPs for information flows, critical analysis and feedback, that are, first and foremost, designed to support/enhance CP learning, productivity. and effectiveness. The independent evaluation of WARO has come to basically the same conclusion and recommendation.

10. If they haven’t already done so, all CPs should develop emergency contingency/preparedness plansEPRPs, and thatthey should outline, in operational terms, how on-going programs (especially safety nets) can be scaled up as transitional/mitigating assistance. The plans should be updated periodically (particularly as programming evolves) and subjected to internal review by WARO and HQs.

11. ACF should consider creating a regional post of “learning and application” advisor whose role will be to “digest” and synthesize lessons from other operations, and to devise, in concert with the ACF Emergency Response Learning Project, headquarters and regional technical advisors, and CDs, application opportunities within the scope of CP strategies/work plans, EPRPs and project plansning.

12. During an emergency, program leadership (CD, PC and Admin/Finance Chief) is the key to effective management and success. Those posts should never be vacant. Accordingly, ACF/HQs should ensure that surge support is provided to fill those posts (one staff member per post) for the full period until (and shortly after) a full-time replacement is hired and on board. In the case of emergency responses, the HR departments of all concerned headquarters should carry out a systematic process of information sharing and management support to meet each other’s recruitment and staffing needs. When warranted, even the temporary sharing of surge personnel should be considered.

13. ACF/Burkina Faso’s experience with national staff deputies should be studied for lessons to be learned and replication as outlined in the Best Practice Table in Annex 2. To the extent that the practice is considered viable in each national context, ACF/Spain and France should continue to pursue policies and strategies tofor the nationalization team international and national staff in of key leadership posts. The specific posts would be determined by policies

enacted by the concerned headquarters. The policy should be implemented within the scope of , it should be undertaken as part of a reasoned and structured human resource development strategy to be carried out over time with no fixed deadline for completion. Rigorous recruitment standards, tangible career opportunities, a competitive compensation packages, as well as close mentoring/training should be part of the HRD process.

14. Procurement rules and regulations should be taken into account when planning project interventions, as they may affect the timing of activities. Where exceptional procurement arrangements are required, they should be carefully and prominently noted in the project proposal and the grant negotiating office should make arrangements for necessary waivers to donor procurement policies during the grant negotiation process.

15. ACF HQs, WARO and regional CDs should begin immediately a series of face-to-face meetings and virtual meetings to analyze, formulate and agree upon, in objectively verifiable terms, the value proposition of WARO to the country missions and the HQs that has the buy- in of all parties. The external evaluation of WARO echoed this recommendation.

16. A standard system for calculating and allocating a fair indirect cost value of those services rendered by WARO to CPs should be devised and used in all grant proposals to defray part of the costs of WARO’s operations, regardless of whether the grants are regional in nature. The responsible contracting party within the ACF network should actively and vigorously articulate to prospective donors the value added of WARO to programming quality and execution, and negotiate approval of that regional indirect cost budget line item in each grant.

Annex 1

2012 Sahel Drought Affected Countries

Annex 2

Best Practice Reporting Table

Best Practice ACF/Burkina Faso’s establishment of national “deputy” positions for all key management positions as a means of grooming promising national professionals to take over program management functions on the basis of experience and skills accumulated, and backed up by the coaching, mentoring and supervision of their expatriate counterparts Innovative Features and  There is no pre-determined time table for handing over Key Characteristics management functions to national staff. National staff learn at a natural pace and are promoted after ample opportunity to witness their accumulation of experience and skills,  Deputies are accorded full responsibility and authority befitting a deputy and are monitored on how they exercise that responsibility/authority, and are held accountable.  The designation of deputies goes as high up as the Country Director.

Practical/Specific  Adequate budget provisions must be made to be able to Recommendations for Roll Out maintain a certain degree of redundancy over several years to make the system work.  Given the investment of time and money that is made in grooming promising professionals, national staff recruitment for the deputy positions should be undertaken by way of a demanding and rigorous process.  Job descriptions and salary levels should be evaluated and adjusted to reflect the levels of responsibility and authority accorded to the deputy positions.  International staff should be made aware of their responsibility to invest time and effort in grooming their deputies. Human resource development should be explicitly noted in their job descriptions and annual performance plans.

Annex 3

Rating of Project Achievements In Terms of Each DAC Criteria – Mali Criteria Rating Rationale 1 2 3 4 5 Impact x Cash transfers did improve the availability of food to targeted households during the months in which they were received. Most of the cash assistance received was expended in the purchase of food. Beneficiaries also attributed cash assistance with enabling them to remain with their families on their land instead of migrating to the capital city or to neighboring countries in search of job opportunities

Nutrition PEC was highly effective in preventing mortality among children with SAM. Sustainability x Groundwork was laid with local stakeholders and beneficiaries to ensure that productive infrastructure built with CFW assistance would be maintained by the beneficiaries/community. Only over several cycles will one be able to tell whether that is the case. However, if programming in further developing productive infrastructure is not carried out in Kita Cercle the prospects of sustaining that constructed during this emergency project will be considerably lower. Capacity building within the scope of PEC is designed to provide nutrition center teams with the necessary skills and management tools to carry out nutrition treatment on a sustainable basis. Whether the GOM supplies health centers with the necessary budget for proper implementation is beyond the control of ACF. Coherence x The provision of cash transfers was coherent with the need to address a prolonged food gap caused by drought. However, the short-term, emergency intervention could not effectively address structural food insecurity that occurs annually during the hungry season. Grant contractual compliance took priority over beneficiary food gap needs when CFW work norms were loosened to attract workers to meet beneficiary targets in Kita, resulting in wide differences in monthly income “earned” among

HHs. The third element of the regional strategy, resilience, was only partly addressed in Kita through soil & water conservation infrastructure through for too short a time to ensure sustained impact. Warrant credit did not figure into the emergency package, but rather in other zones not targeted for emergency assistance. With time for planning and financing, warrant credit could have been integrated into the emergency assistance package Coverage x The force majeur change of implementation venue from Gao to Kita for security reasons limited the duration of CFW. Local leaders and authorities note that by tightening targeting criteria to match resource availability, may households experiencing food insecurity similar to beneficiaries were not chosen to receive assistance. PEC nutrition assistance was provided in all health centers in targeted health districts. Relevance/Appropriateness x Cash assistance, which was used by HHs to buy food for the most part, was entirely relevant to the need to address the hunger gap of the very poor and poor. Blanket feeding in Ansongo and distribution of MISOLA in Kati were appropriate safety net interventions to mitigate the spike in MAM to SAM during the hunger season. Certain distributions occurred after the peak hunger period (after September) thus missing the peak of the hunger season. Non-conditioned CT should have been undertaken in Kita instead of CFW given time constraints.. Effectiveness x ACF was effective in targeting the poor and very poor households for assistance in targeted communes and that assistance, while provided, helped to bridge the food gap of beneficiaries. ACF’s nutrition was highly effective in meeting all three SPHERE standards for the treatment of SAM. Efficiency x Under duress, ACF relocated the venue for the ECHO Mitigation project very quickly on the basis of a rapid vulnerability assessment. It was probably advisable that ACF not attempt to distribute cash assistance as CFW in Kita given the very short window for proper execution of

59 effective infrastructure projects and a very tight deadline for thorough planning. Non- conditioned CT (similar to the OFDA project) was recommendable.

Annex 3 (Continued)

Rating of Project Achievements In Terms of Each DAC Criteria – Niger Criteria Rating Rationale 1 2 3 4 5 Impact x Cash transfers did improve the availability of food to targeted households during the months in which they were received. Most of the cash assistance received was expended in the purchase of food.

There are early tangible signs that soil and water conservation infrastructure can have an impact on the quality of land for planting and grazing.

Warrant credit assistance has the potential to protect harvests and increase HH income, but needs to be analyzed over time with rigor and precision.

Nutrition PEC was highly effective in preventing mortality among children with SAM. Sustainability x Groundwork was laid with local stakeholders and beneficiaries to ensure that productive infrastructure built with CFW assistance would be maintained by the beneficiaries/community. Only over several cycles will one be able to tell whether that is the case. Capacity building within the scope of PEC is designed to provide nutrition center teams with the necessary skills and management tools to carry out nutrition treatment on a sustainable basis. Whether the GOM supplies health centers with the necessary budget for proper implementation is beyond the control of ACF. Coherence x ACF/Niger was able to implement a full three- stage package of mitigation, response and resilience assistance to the same universe of beneficiaries, though on a progressively narrowing scale due to resource limitations. Coverage x ACF did target communities judged to be the most food insecure in regions designated by national authorities as priority. However resource limitations made did not permit ACF to reach all HHs which experienced food insecurity during the hunger. Distinguishing levels HH

food insecurity was an exercise in triage. Local leaders felt that there were many more HHs. which needed and deserved cash assistance. With WFP financing cash assistance was provided for a period that adequately met the food gap that occurred during an extended hunger period., Warrant credit assistance was provided to the most vulnerable HHs among the total universe of beneficiaries. Many more were worthy of participation, but resource limitations (for credit and grains storage facilities) kept coverage at very low levels. PEC nutrition assistance was provided in all health centers in targeted health districts. Relevance/Appropriateness x Cash assistance, which was used by HHs to buy food for the most part, was entirely relevant to the need to address the hunger gap of the very poor and poor. Mitigation assistance could have been more relevant and effective had safety net blanket feeding of vulnerable segments of he population been a regular part of ACF’s nutritional assistance. Some respondents in the health centers would like to see ACF begin to address the problem of MAM at the community level as a pre-emptive form of reducing the incidence of SAM. Effectiveness x ACF was effective in targeting the poor and very poor households for assistance in targeted communes and that assistance, while provided, helped to bridge the food gap of beneficiaries. ACF’s nutrition was highly effective in meeting all three SPHERE standards for the treatement of SAM. Efficiency x ACF/Niger carried out vulnerability assessments, targeting and project implementation with adequate efficiency. Work plans and targeted achievements were met for the most part.

Annex 3 (Continued)

Rating of Project Achievements In Terms of Each DAC Criteria – Burkina Faso Criteria Rating Rationale 1 2 3 4 5 Impact x The operations carried out in 2012 in the province of Gnagna made it possible to consolidate assistance provided to flood victims in 2010, and those assisted within the framework of REPI. La mission a su articuler les différentes aides afin de les inscrire dans la durée. In the other provinces of Kompienga and Tapoa support for the health districts for the treatment of SAM and improvement of water and sanitation infrastructure show promise of impact Sustainability x Food security assistance through CFW (paddy rice field rehabilitation and soil and water conservation measures in fields) with accompanying training of beneficiaries should prove sustainable on the condition that ACF provides integrated follow-up assistance involving food security, nutrition and improved nutrition, health and hygiene practices. Coherence x The assistance proposal was conceived and presented to donors as a three-phase approach – mitigatiojn/response/rehabilitation, and in concert with post-flood REPI operations in. The approach gives the response coherence with the dynamics of the problems as well as the solutions. In Tapoa DFID and ECHO financing has permitted a longer-term projection of development response into 2013. The initiative of locally producing an fortified infant food, « Yonhanma » by Women’s Associations offers potential as a sustainable solution to childhood malnutrition and structural food insecurity through local longer-term development. Coverage x 6,000 HHs have received assistance within the relatively isolated province of Tapoa which integrated food security and livelihoods, Nutrition/health and, to a lesser degree, WASH. Relevance/Appropriateness x 6 months of CFW assistance with proper technical assistance and monitoring has resulted in the rehabilitation of paddy rice fields, the

construction of soil and water conservation measures in farm fields, and the distribution of improved seeds that all contributed to improved agriculture productivity. Effectiveness x Cash transfer assistance in threee provinces (Gnagna, Kompienga, Tapoa) in the form of CFW and non-conditioned cash transfers have provided the most vulnerable households with access to food during a critical hunger season while improving their ability to improve the prospects of increased food production in the future. It is worth noting the excellent collaboration between ACF teams and government agriculture and social action services in the provinces. That collaboration has resulted in ACF being awarded the national distinction of “Médaille de Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite) in December 2012. Efficiency x ACF identified and selected efficiently 6.000 households deemed to be very poor and poor in Tapoa Province. In Gnagna Province, ACF built upon its 2010 REPI operations to identify and aid vulnerable households, this time affected by drought.

Annex 3 (Continued)

Rating of Project Achievements In Terms of Each DAC Criteria – Chad Criteria Rating Rationale 1 2 3 4 5 Impact x Cash transfer assistance in Kanem filled a serious food gap for households which received back family members who once worked in Libya, permiting them to reconstruct their lives once again in Chad. The distribution of animal fodder prevented family herds from being decimated and the distribution of new animals to those who had lost their herds put households back on the road to recovery, thus strengthening the resilience of households into the future. Sustainability x Training in grain and seed storage was well received by beneficiaries and offer potential for future improved levels of food security. The very short and limited training provided to women on essential hygiene practices risks not being practiced as changes in KAP require much more, and more dynamic sensitization and training over time to take hold. Coherence x As an emergency response, ACF’s actions filled food gaps and contributed to healing severely malnourished children. However, due to limited resources and time, the response could not address structural food insecurity that affects the targeted areas of the country. Coverage x Kanem and BEG, 2 regions with the highest incidences of malnutrition and structural vulnerability to food insecurity wer effectively targeted. However the scale of food security and nutrition/health assistance that was provided was sufficient to reach only a portion of the population that required assistance. This shortfall was one of the observations most often cited by local authorities. Relevance/Appropriateness x The decision to distribute food aid rather than cash assistance was relevant to the need and market conditions in the targeted areas. The quantities available for distribution were below the levels required by households to completely

fill their food gap.

Effectiveness x CT and CFW assistance provided from April to November, 2012 provided valuable access to food during a prolonged hunger season. Efficiency x ACF efficiently identified and selected 4,377 vulnerable households in 51 villages in 7 zones of the Nokou Region for timely assistance to the satisfaction of local authorities.

Annex 3 (Continued)

Rating of Project Achievements In Terms of Each DAC Criteria – Regional Criteria Rating Rationale 1 2 3 4 5 Impact x Timely ACF assistance provided timely life- saving access to food to the most vulnerable households in communities identified to be the hardest hit by drought in their respective countries. Cash assistance addressed a food gap during an extended hunger season and on-going treatment programs for severely malnourished children saved lives that probably would have been lost in greater numbers as a result of drought conditions. Sustainability x The conditional cash transfer assistance through CFW contributed to creating/rehabilitating productive infrastructure that would improve the ability of households to improve their levels of food security going forward. Because of their short-term nature, without guaranteed out years of follow-up technical assistance and further support, one can only be left to assume that the beneficiaries and their communities will maintain the infrastructure. FFT, however, was of such short duration and scope that it does not seem likely that those actions will result in sustained change in KAP without further concerted and more dynamic programming. ACF did what it should to build capacity in health centers and health districts to provide effective treatment of severe acute malnutrition. Sustaining those services, however depends on continued government investments from the national budgets, which is entirely beyond of the control of ACF. Coherence x The West African Regional Strategy outlines a coherent response to need for mitigation, response, and resilience to the shocks of emergencies. ACF did its best to piece together individual grants that approximated an integrated approach to emergency response, though funding scale and project durations did not allow ACF to implement all three phases at the same scale and scope with the same beneficiary populations.

Some interventions that offered promise, such as blanket feedings and warrant credit were not adopted by all CPs as components of their response. Coverage x All four CPs secured over 22.8 million Euros of funding for national responses. Significant as the sums were, ACF will still obliged to target beneficiaries in a manner similar to triage, leaving households that were worthy of some form/level of food security assistance unattended. Relevance/Appropriateness x Cash and food assistance was a relevant and appropriate modality for filling the food gap during an extended hunger season. When market conditions could not absorb an injection of cash into the affected communities (in Chad) ACF rightfully distributed food assistance. When WFP logistical constraints did not permit enough food to be made available to beneficiaries, a blend of cash and food was appropriately provided. Though limited in scale and scope, support for resilience strengthening (warrant credit, rice paddy rehabilitation, soil & water conservation measures and herd replenishment were appropriately provided to the most vulnerable among beneficiaries as a step in the right direction. Over 22.8 million Euros were mobilized by WARO and the 5 affected CPs, in concert with their respective HQs. Effectiveness x Households that received cash and food assistance used them to fill their food gap during the hunger season, resulting in improvements in food consumption (as measured by Food Consumption Scores). Efficiency x ACF was timely in its signaling of the scale and scope of the drought emergency in the region. WARO undertook a vigorous campaign to raise resources for a plan of response, against which the first grants were secured on a timely basis. Despite force majeur (insecurity in Mali) and human resource and operational constraints related staff turn-over (Mali and Chad), CPs implemented response actions with reasonable efficiency.

Annex 4

EXTERNAL EVALUATION OF ACF INTERNATIONAL’S RESPONSE TO THE WEST AFRICAN SAHEL FOOD CRISIS 2012

TERMS OF REFERENCE (ToR)

Country: Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal.

Total Number of (Paid) Days: 74 (37 days each for 2 evaluators)

Starting Date: 22nd October 2012

Proposed Schedule

Activity Dates (estimates) No. of Days Preparation and Briefings 22nd -26th October 5 Field Work (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and 26th October – 18th 18 Senegal) November Data Analysis and Review 19th November-22nd 4 November Writing of First Draft 23rd November-28th 6 November Finalisation of Report 9th-10th December 2 Debriefing (Paris/Madrid) 12th December 1 Learning Workshop January 2013 1 Total 37

NB: ACF’s emergency response in Mauritania will have already been evaluated under another evaluation. Therefore the present evaluation will not involve a trip to field sites in Mauritania, only a trip to the coordination team in Nouakchott if deemed necessary.

1. PURPOSE OF THE EVALUATION

The purpose of the evaluation is to enhance ACF International’s operational performance and contribute to the wider learning of the organisation on emergency preparedness and response. ACF has been present in the Sahel for almost 30 years and has responded to many peaks in the food crisis in the region. This evaluation aims to ensure ACF is able to learn from the response in 2012 and enhance the capacity of on-going programmes to respond to peaks more effectively.

2. OBJECTIVES OF THE EVALUATION

a. To assess the deployment/scale up of ACF in response to the needs of the population in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal following the Sahel crisis in 2012. The implications of the response for on-going activities and the longer-term impact of the crisis (and response) on ACF activities in the countries/region. b. Provide actionable recommendations on how ACF can improve emergency response capabilities in the region.

3. SCOPE OF THE EVALUATION

The evaluation will cover six key areas relating to ACF’s emergency response in the West African Sahel.

3.1. Overall Emergency Response (40%)

• Timeliness of the response in each area of operation/activity

o The evaluation should assess the ability of ACF to scale up and respond to a looming crisis in a timely manner.

• Appropriateness of the strategy for the response

o Coherence with other humanitarian interventions

o Coherence with humanitarian needs

• Appropriateness of the technical response in relation to the needs

o Appropriateness of needs assessment methodology & findings

o Involvement of beneficiary communities in needs assessments & strategy development

• Development of appropriate monitoring tools, sharing of relevant data and implementation of feedback loops

o Between ACF Headquarters (HQ-HQ)

o Between HQ and Field Office (HQ-Field)

o Between programmes and bases in the field (Field-Field)

• Assess the effectiveness of ACF’s regional strategy in responding to recurrent crises

o The role of the WARO office in coordinating a regional strategy

o Assess the DRM strategy in the region and how this is designed to enable effective scale-up in response to peaks in the crisis.

o Assess the implications (for each consecutive crisis) of recurrent crises in terms of preparedness, DRM and LRRD.

o Role of HQ in providing strategic support for transitional planning

• Timeliness & appropriateness of advocacy efforts

• Integration of lessons learned from previous emergency responses (e.g. Niger Food Crisis 2009, Haiti Earthquake, Pakistan Floods, and the Horn of Africa)

3.2. Systems (60%)

3.2.1. Human Resources • Timeliness & Appropriateness of Emergency Pool staff

o Programme Staff (e.g. WASH, Nutrition, Food Security)

o Support Staff (e.g. Logistics, Administration, HR, Communication Focal Person, Security Focal Person)

• Appropriateness of pre-departure training & briefing (PAD)

• Inclusion of key/experienced national staff in emergency response systems & structures

• Appropriateness and compliance with HR procedures

o Job descriptions

o Recruitment of national staff

o Salary Scales

o Contracts & compliance with national labour laws

o Security Protocol & Management

• Appropriateness of support systems at HQ level

• Integration of lessons learned from previous emergency responses (e.g. Niger Food Crisis 2009, Haiti Earthquake, Pakistan Floods and the Horn of Africa)

3.2.2. Logistics • Availability and effective & timely use of regional emergency stocks

• Appropriateness of logistical support provided

o Per programme area

o Coordination level

• Appropriateness and compliance with logistical procedures

o Procurement

o Stock use, supervision and management

• Timeliness and appropriateness of communication platforms

o Internet, HF/VHF, Telephone/Satellite telephone

• Integration of lessons learned from previous emergency responses (e.g. Niger Food Crisis 2009, Haiti Earthquake, Pakistan Floods and the Horn of Africa)

3.2.3. Coordination • Strengths & Weaknesses of ACF HQ coordination

• Assess the appropriateness of coordination mechanisms (ACF Emergency Response SOP for example)

• Availability and/or use of ACF coordination guidelines to guide collaboration between all HQs (Paris, Madrid, New York, London & Montreal).

• Participation of ACF staff in key UN cluster groups and other inter-agency coordination initiatives

• Role of the ACF West Africa Regional Office (WARO) in facilitating a regional response from the network.

3.2.4. Communication • Integration with different coordination mechanisms (at field and HQ level)

• Appropriateness of Internal Communications process and systems

o Between ACF Headquarters (HQ-HQ)

o Between HQ and Field Office (HQ-Field)

o Between programmes and bases in the field (Field-Field)

• Relevance of communication focus

o Degree of beneficiary-based perspectives

o Emphasis placed on less publicised aspects of the emergency

• Integration of new social media outlets

o Range of platforms used (e.g. blogs, websites)

o Effective capitalisation of field perspectives in real-time

• Integration of lessons learned from previous emergency responses (e.g. Niger Food Crisis 2009, Haiti Earthquake, Pakistan Floods and the Horn of Africa)

3.2.5. Administration, Finance and Fundraising • Capacity to raise private and public funds at country, regional and HQ level.

• Identify a pattern of ACF’s approach to its key institutional funders (how is the search/requests for funding instigated?)

• Appropriateness of administrative & finance support provided

o Per programme area

o National level

o At HQ level

• Timeliness of the disbursement of funds for the emergency response

• Management of multi-donor (public & private) and multi-HQ funding

o Availability and use of guidelines

• Integration of lessons learned from previous emergency responses (e.g. Niger Food Crisis 2009, Haiti Earthquake, Pakistan Floods and the Horn of Africa)

4. GENERAL TERMS & CONSIDERATIONS

It will be undertaken as an independent examination of the background, assessment, activities and means deployed by ACF, in the implementation of the response, in order to facilitate a ‘learning workshop’ and evaluation report outlining the main findings and recommendations for future interventions and decision making.

The evaluation should examine the standard and quality of goods and services generated by the response, in the opinion of the beneficiaries, ACF management and technical departments, technical governmental departments and other key stakeholders.

ACF will commit to ensure measures are taken to ensure each mission and HQ provides the necessary documentation for the evaluators to undertake the evaluation. ACF will also ensure sufficient resources are allocated to ensure a comprehensive learning workshop takes place.

5. EVALUATION CRITERIA

ACF International subscribes to the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) criteria for evaluation: Impact, Sustainability, Coherence, Coverage, Relevance / Appropriateness, Effectiveness and Efficiency. ACF International also promotes systematic analysis of the monitoring system and cross cutting issues (gender, HIV/AIDS etc). The evaluation is not expected to assess the response under each of the individual criteria however the standards described by the DAC should be respected when appropriate.

6. METHODOLOGY OF THE EVALUATION

The methodology is expected to include (but not limited to) the following:

Briefing Prior to the evaluation taking place, a briefing will be conducted physically in Paris and Madrid.

Field activities Data collection by three means:

• Direct information: Visit to HQ departments, mission (capital and base), interviews with HQ staff and field staff in post at the time of the emergency response.

• Indirect information: Interviews with beneficiaries and local representatives; interviews with project staff expatriate and national staff); meeting with local authorities, groups of beneficiaries, humanitarian agencies, donor representatives and other stakeholders. For indirect data collection, standard and participatory evaluation methods are expected to be used (HH interviews and FGDs with beneficiaries, non-beneficiaries, key informants – health workers, teachers and leaders)

• Secondary information analysis: Analysis of project monitoring data or of any other relevant statistical data. Relevant documentation (including policies, strategies and sitreps) to the response shall also be sought and analysed.

Debriefing with individual field teams Before departure from each field base the evaluation team should debrief on the findings from the visit and thoroughly inform the field team on the next steps of the evaluation. The evaluator should debrief as far as possible on the progress (and findings) of the evaluation.

Evaluation Report • The draft report must be submitted no later than 10 days before the end date agreed by the contract. The final report will be submitted no later than the end date of the consultancy contract.

• The evaluation report shall have a maximum length of 50 pages including the Executive Summary at the beginning of the document, Findings, Conclusions and Recommendations.

• The report should be presented in draft form for comment, before the final report is completed. Relevant comments from the Mission and ACF HQ debriefings should be incorporated in the final report.

• The final report will be submitted in an electronic version to the given reference staff supporting the programme evaluation (as agreed at the Briefing), including all annexes, together with a hard copy. Annexes to the report will be accepted in the working language of the country and programme subject to the evaluation.

Debriefing at ACF HQ (with Country Directors joining via Skype) The evaluation team should provide a debriefing (based on a draft document) with the following objectives: • To present the draft findings of the review to the mission/HQ and other stakeholders

• To gather feedback on the findings and build consensus on recommendations

ACF will have had the chance to review the draft report prior to the debriefing. All relevant comments made during the debriefing (and in writing) should be incorporated in the final report.

Learning Workshop

Once the evaluation report is complete, the evaluation team should facilitate a learning workshop on the main findings, conclusions and recommendations of the evaluation. The evaluation team should facilitate ACF to develop action-oriented workshop statements on lessons learned and proposed improvements for the future.

7. CORE DOCUMENTS

• ACF International Emergency Response Standard Operating Procedures • ACF International Evaluation Policy and Guidelines • ACF West Africa Regional Strategy • ACF Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, Mali and Mauritania Country Strategies • External Evaluation of ACF International’s Emergency Response in the Horn of Africa • Evaluation of ACF's Response to the Pakistan Floods • Evaluation of ACF’s Haiti Earthquake Response

Annex 5

Evaluation of ACF International’s Response to the West African Sahel Food Crisis 2012 John Wiater (JWI) and Jean Le Bloas (JLB)– Evaluation Consultants (Consolidated Itinerary Reflecting International Travel – In Country Details Reflected Separately by Consultants)

◄ Sep 2012 ~ October 2012 ~ Nov 2012 ► Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat 1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 Contracts sent by ACF and signed/returned by consultants

28 29 30 31 Notes: ACF sends ACF sends out letters Wiater send visa evaluators essential of engagement for application to the background each country Consulate of Mali in documents. evaluation (for visas) NYC by courier ACF makes airline reservations (essential for visa applications)

Note: Anticipated travel marked in red

◄ Oct 2012 ~ November 2012 ~ Dec 2012 ► Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat 1 2 3 Consulate of Mali received visa application forms.

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 JWI Travel: Mali visa New Britain, CT New Britain, CT New Britain, CT San Diego – approved. (free) (free) (free) Hartford, CT JWI submits visa application to the Consulate of Niger in NYC 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 New Britain, CT New Britain, CT New Britain, CT Niger Visa JWI Travel: JWI arrives JWI and JLB: (free) (free) (free) approved NYC – Paris PARIS 06:00 PARIS (Evening) JLB arr Paris_Orly from Evaluation scope, Pre-evaluation Pre-evaluation Brest at 08:15 methods, documents documents Briefing by AFD schedule finalized review at home review at home HQ. Desk Officer by the evaluators bases bases BF & CHD Evaluation scope, methods, schedule 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 JWI & JLB SEN SEN SEN CHD (JLB) CHD (JLB) CHD (JLB) Travel to DKR JWI and JLB Continue Morning meetings MAL(JWI)) MAL (JWI) MAL (JWI) Briefings/meetings meetings with with regional JWI and JLB with ACF WARO ACF WARO stakeholders. To be determined To be determined To be determined Travel: Team Team. JWI Travel: for each country for each country for each country Dep Paris CDG Meeting with With regional Dakar – Bamako with the with the with the 16:25 concerned international Dep 12:00- Ar respective respective respective Arr Dakar regional organizations 13:45 country teams by country teams by country teams by 21:05 international (OCHA, concerned concerned concerned organizations FAO/WFP, JLB Travel: evaluator. evaluator. evaluator. (OCHA, UNICEF, Dakar - Ndj FAO/WFP, Humanitarian dep Dkr 07:30 UNICEF, Cluster (via Douala) Humanitarian members/leads, Arr Ndjamena: Cluster Donors) 19:20 members/leads, Donors

25 26 27 28 Férié au 29 30 CHD (JLB) CHD (JLB) CHD (JLB) Tchad CHD (JLB) CHD (JLB) MAL (JWI) MAL (JWI) MAL (JWI) CHD (JLB) MAL (JWI) MAL (JWI) MAL (JWI) To be determined To be determined To be determined To be determined To be determined for each country for each country for each country To be for each country for each country with the with the with the determined for with the with the respective respective country respective each country with respective respective country teams by teams by country teams by the respective country teams by country teams by concerned concerned concerned country teams by concerned concerned evaluator. evaluator. evaluator. concerned evaluator. evaluator. evaluator.

◄ Nov 2012 ~ December 2012 ~ Jan 2013 ► Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat 1 CHD (JLB MAL (JWI)

To be determined for each country with the respective country teams by concerned evaluator.

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 BF (JLB) BF (JLB) BF (JLB) BF (JLB) BF (JLB) BF (JLB) BF (JLB) NIG (JWI) NIG (JWI) NIG (JWI) NIG (JWI) NIG (JWI) NIG (JWI) NIG (JWI) JLB Travel: N’Djamena - Ouaga To be determined To be determined To be determined To be determined To be determined To be determined Dep Ndjamena : for each country for each country for each country for each country for each country for each country 09 :00 with the with the with the with the with the with the respective (via Lomé, Togo) respective respective respective respective respective country teams by country teams by country teams by country teams by country teams by country teams by Arr Ouaga : 15 :10 concerned concerned concerned concerned concerned concerned evaluator. evaluator. evaluator. evaluator. evaluator. evaluator. JWI Travel : Bamako – Niamey Dep Bamako 15 :20 (via Ouagadougou) Ar Niamey 22 :55

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 BF (JLB) BF (JLB) BF (JLB) SEN SEN SEN SEN NIG (JWI) NIG (JWI) JLB Travel Ouaga – Dakar Data analysis and Data analysis and Draft evaluation Draft evaluation To be determined To be determined Dep Ouaga: 15 :30 review by both review by both report report for each country for each country (via Abidja) evaluators evaluators with the with the Arr Dakar : 22 :45 respective respective JWI Travel : Niamey- country teams by country teams by Dakar concerned concerned evaluator. evaluator. Dep Niamey 08 :30 (via Cotonou) Arr Dakar : 19 :40

◄ Nov 2012 ~ December 2012 ~ Jan 2013 ► Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 SEN SEN SEN SEN JWI – MADRID JWI Travel:Madrid – FREE Debrief WARO JLB – PARIS (Arr Denver (Via Paris & JFK) Draft evaluation Draft evaluation (morning) CDG: 06:05 ) Dep.: 07:05 report report JWI Travel: Dakar- Debriefings of Paris JWI Travel: Paris – HQ/Paris and Dep: 23:35 Madrid HQ/Madrid. Arr.: 09:20 A video conference JLB Travel: Paris – including Madrid staff Brest highly recommended. JLB Travel Dakar- Dep Orly 18:30

Paris Arr Brest 19:40 Submit draft Dep Dakar: 23:35 evaluation report to ACF/UK 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE ACF review of ACF review of ACF review of evaluation report evaluation report evaluation report

30 31

◄ Dec 2012 ~ January 2013 ~ Feb 2013 ► Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat 1 2 3 4 5 FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE

ACF review of ACF review of ACF review of evaluation report evaluation report evaluation report

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 FREE FREE FREE Evaluators make Evaluators make Evaluators submit required edits to required edits to final evaluation ACF/UK submits evaluation evaluation report to feed back from document. document. ACF/UK. HQs and Country Offices to Evaluators 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31 Notes:

Annex 6

Resource Materials/Bibliography

Programming and Planning Documents Regional  ACF West Africa Operational Strategy: 2011 – 2015  Formulaire Unique Pour Les Actions D'Aide Humanitaire de l’Union Europeen : Atténuation des Risques de Crise Alimentaire et Nutritionnelle au Sahel-Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso (28/11/2011)  ACF nutrition Response to the Sahel Crisis 2012 in Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso. Project Proposal to SIDA  ACF Response to the Sahel Crisis 2012: From Emergency to Recovery Phase – Burkina Faso & Niger (2/8/2012). Project Proposal to DFID  ACF Food Security and Livelihoods Response to Sahel Crisis 2012 – Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Chad & Niger (5/3/2012)  Réponse Nutritionnelle d’ACF à la Crise de 2012 au Sahel : Burkina Faso, Mali & Mauritania (Proposal to SIDA)  Sahel 2012: Cluster Strategic Indicators for Food Assistance - Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Northern Cameroon, Senegal, The Gambia. WFP (September 2012)

Burkina Faso  Strategie Operationnelle du Burkina Faso 2012-2014  Project to contribute to the reduction of acute malnutrition-related morbidity and mortality in Burkina Faso (Revised proposal to OFDA: 17/4/2012)  Fiche de Fonds de ACF: Distribution de Semences aux Menages Vulnerables de la Region de l’Est du Burkina Faso (5/2012)  Fiche de Fonds de ACF: Preparation a la Reponse d’Urgence Nutritionelle au Burkina Faso (2/2012)

Niger  Country & Mission Strategy : 2012-2015  Transfert de Cash Inconditionnel dans les communes de Keita, Ibohamane et Garhanga dans le département de Keita et Tchaké et Guidan Amoumoune dans le département de Mayahi (Proposal to WFP under EMOP 200 398)  European Union Single Form For Humanitarian Aid Actions: Prise en charge de la malnutrition aigüe au travers de l'appui aux districtx sanitaire du Niger (14/5/2012)  ACF Cash for Work Assistance in Mayahi & Keita (Proposal to OFDA)

Chad  Strategie Operationelle 2012-2015 – ACF/Tchad  European Union Single Form For Humanitarian Aid Actions: Prise en charge de lurgence nutritionnelle dans la bande Sahélienne au Tchad (27/3/2012)

 European Union Single Form For Humanitarian Aid Actions: Soutien aux ménages vulnérables du Kanem affectés par la mauvaise campagne agro-pastorale 2011-2012 (7/5/2012)  Response to the nutritional emergency in Bahr El Gazel region – Chad: 1/5/2012 to 30/4/2013(Proposal to SIDA)  Fiche des Fonds ACF: Preparation a la reponse d’urgence nutritionelle au Tchad – Reponse a l’urgence Sahel 2012 (23/1/2012)  European Union Single Form For Humanitarian Aid Actions: Prise en charge de lurgence nutritionnelle dans la bande Sahélienne au Tchad (27/3/2012)

Mauritania  Project to fight against food insecurity by strengthening the productive capacity of farm households in the regions Guidimakha and Gorgol, Mauritania (Proposal to DFID)

Assessments and Evaluations  Analyse de la production de biomasse au Sahel - Saison des pluies 2011. ACF (2011)  Analyse Cartographique des Marchés en Urgence Etude des systèmes de marchés des céréales sèches dans les régions du Kanem et du Bahr El Gazal. ACF and Oxfam. (January, 2012)  HEA Report : Profil de Moyens d’Existence Zone Agropastorale - Département de MAYAHI (Février 2012)  Evaluation Preliminaire des Recoltes de la Campagne Agricole d’Hivernage 2012 et Resultats Provisoires 2012-2013. Ministry of Agriculture of Niger. (November, 2012)  Stratégie d’Intervention : ACF Bulletin for Niger (May, 2012)  Dossier Warrantage dans le Cercle de Kita - Communes de Gadougou 1 et Gadougou 2 - Région de Kayes du Mali. (December, 2010)  Résultats de l’Evaluation du Warrantage à Mayahi et Dakoro, Niger (Power Point Summary)  Evaluation Externe Atténuation des Risques de Crise Alimentaire et Nutritionnelle au Sahel. Eric Levron (July, 2012)  Les Jardins de la Santé : Etude d’Iimpact et de Capitalisation - Communes de Gadougou I et Gadougou II, Cercle de Kita - Région de Kayes - République du Mali. ACF (July 2010)

Project Monitoring and Reporting Documents  Formulaire Unique Pour Les Actions d'Aide Humanitaire: Atténuation des risques de crise alimentaire et nutritionnelle au Sahel – Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso. Rapport Final (24 September 2012)

Other Documents  Hand-over Report by Patricia Hoorelbeke, Regional Representative from December 2009 to August 2012 (August 2012)

 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) On the Co-operation between ACF-Spain, ACF- France, ACF-UK, ACF-USA In the management of ACF West Africa Regional Office (Up-dated on 18 September 2012)  Mali 2012 Consolidated Annual Appeal (CAP). OCHA

Annex 7

Persons Interviewed

ACF/Paris • Vincent TAILLANDIER, Director of Operations • Segolen GUILLAUMAT, Programme Manager • William DUFOURCQ, Emergency Pool Desk Officer • Lucile GROSJEAN, Mohd SYLLA and Patrick XXXXX (Emergency Pool) • Anne-Lyse COUTIN, Food Security and Livelihoods Desk Officer • Jean LAPEGUE, WASH Director • Gilles BONNET, Administration and Finance Director • Claire VERDALLE, Human Resources Director

ACF/Madrid • Vincent STEHLI, Director of Operations • Alvaro PASCUAL, Emergency Food Security Advisor • Marisa SANCHEZ, Nutrition Advisro • Frederic HAM, Disaster Risk Reduction Advisor • Julien JACOB, Food Security Advisor • Roberta VALZECCHI, Human Resources Director • Lucia PRIETO, Project Officer, West Africa Dakar

ACF West Africa Regional Office (WARO) Staff • Anais LAFITE, WARO Regional Representative • Barbara FRATTARUOLO, Programme Coordinator • Alex GACHOUD, Deputy Programme Coordinator • Christina GARCIA (Administration & Finance Coordinator) • Martin MORAND, Advocacy Officer • Christophe BREYNE, CaLP Coordinator

Regional Stakeholders/Partners in Dakar ECHO: • Sophie BATTAS, Programme Officer (Senegal, Mauritania, and Mali) • Dr Jean-Louis MOSSER, Health and Nutrition Expert • Sigrid KUHLKE

OCHA: • Max SCHOTT, Humanitarian Affairs Officer

UNICEF: • Patricia HOORELBEKE, Nutrition Specialist (former WARO Representative)

World Food Programme: • Cédric CHARPENTIER, Regional Food Security Assessment Officer Burkina Faso ACF/Burkina Faso Staff N’Djamena Head Office • Anne BICHARD, Country Director • Théodore KABORE, Deputy Country Director • Abdoulaye ILBOUDO, Food Security Coordinator • Elodie HO, • Parfait COULDIATY, Human Resources Coordinator • Elisa DOMINGUEZ, (CMN) • Claire GAILLARDOU, Disaster Risk Management Coordinator

Gnagna, Field Office for Bogandé • Ilboudo Aimé, Logistics and Administration Manager • Dr Paulin Koffi, Nutrition Chief • Dr Thiombiano Rodrigue, Doctor-CREN • Albert Bourgou et Max Lankouandé, REPI Project Managers

Fada N’Gourma Field Office • Mohamed TAPSOBA, Logistics and Administration Chief

Diapaga Field Office • Guilhem MANTE, Field Coordinator • Marie CLERC , Logistics, Administration, and Human Resources Manager • Marie DAHANI, Food Security Chief • Souleymane BADINI, Nutrition and Health Chief • Mathieu OUEDRAOGO, Food Security Project Manager • Motandi BANGOU, « Bas-Fonds » Rehabilitation Technician • Mamata, XXX , « Cordons pierreux » Technician • Armel NITIEMA, Yonhanma Blended Infant Food Project Manager

Government Officials • Sawadogo Soumaïla, Provincial Director of the Ministry of Agriculture - Gnagna. • N/N, Provincial Director of the Ministry of Agriculture - Tapoa • Serge COMBARY, Provincial Director of Social Action – Tapoa • M. Bari , Chief of Program, Provicial Office of Social Action – Tapoa • Dahani Ousmane, Nurse, Kalbouli CSPS

International Organizations and Donors • ECHO: Eric PITOIS, Humanitarian Aid Coordinator in the E.U. Mission • WFP : Stéphane DEGUEURCE, Food Security Expert

Partner Organizations/Local NGOs • SOS-Sahel: Salifou OUEDRAOGO, West Africa Director Blaise SOME, West Africa Office

Beneficiaries Gnagna • Bamprounga Village -8 members of the management committee for the rehabilitation of « Bas-Fonds” • Manni Commune(Siedougou Village) – workers on stone barriers construction project. Tapoa • Niamanga Village - Agbalibiga Nassouli, Président of the « Bas-Fond » management committee • Pimboanga Village - workers on stone barriers construction project Bogandé • Unité de production de farine infantile Yonhanma, Women’s Committee Diapaga • Unité de production de farine infantile Yonhanma, Women’s Committee + Mali ACF/Niger Staff • Franck VANNETELLE, Country Director • Mamadou DIOP, Administration Coordinator • Louka DAOU, Assistant Coordinator, Food Security • Habibata, TRAORE, Assistant Coordinator, Nutrition Kita Field Office • Kassim, KOROMA, Head of the Kita Field Office • Dr. Theophane TRAORE, Nutrition Manager • Yousouf, MAIGA, Food Security Manager Koulikoro Field Office • Youssouf BONKOUNGOU, Head of Field Office, Koulikoro • Arissa DIAKITE, Chief of Food Security and Livelihoods, Koulikoro • Silvie DJARRA, Project Manager, SIDA Blanket Feeding, Koulikoro

Government Officials • Mayri DIALLO, Project Director, Early Warning Service (SAP) • Guidere DOLO, Head of Information Technology, Early Warning Service (SAP) • Seydou Kalifa TRAORE, Prefet, Cercle of Kita • Moustafa SIBY, First Vice-president, Conseil,Cercle of Kita • General Secretary of the Mayor’s Office, Djidjian • Seydou BAGAYOKO, Head of the Kita field office of the Agricultural Service

International Organizations and Donors • Marieme DIALLO, Emergency Coordinator, WFP • Alice GOLAY, Reports Officer, WFP • Sylvie FONTAINE, Head of Aid and Cooperation, European Union Partner Organizations/Local NGOs

• , Stop Sahel, Head of the Kita Field Office • Mohamadouy, DAMBELE, CFW Animators, Stop Sahel, Djidjian • Ousman SISSOKO, CFW Animator, Stop Sahel, Djidjian • Andre DJARRA, Credit Agent, Caisse d’Epagne et Credit “NYESIGISO”

Beneficiaries • 25 Participants in CFW activities in Djidjian • 6 representatives of non-beneficiary households in Djidjian • 2 merchants in Djidjian

Niger ACF/Niger Staff • Thierry METAIS, Country Director • Jairo PAIZANO, Program Coordinator • Amadou AMINOU, Nutrition Coordinator • Seidou MANI, Food Security and Livelihoods Coordinator • Sanoussi DODO, WASH Coordinator

Mayahi Field Office • Moumine ZIRKANEINI, Head of the Mayahi Field Office • Issa HAINIKOYU, Nutrition Manager • Yadiga Abdoul MOUMOUNI, Food Security Manager • Food Security Promoter Team • Nutrition Promoter Team

Government Officials • The Prefet, Department of Mayahi • Hassane CHAIBOU, Departmental Director, Technical Service for the Environment • Maman SANI, Deputy Director, Technical Service for the Environment • Dr. Doulla HALIDOU, Departmental Medical Chief, Mayahi General Hospital • Chief of Centre de Sante Integral (CSI), Mayahi • Chief of the CSI, Comune of Kanembakache • Director of the Department of Agriculture, Department of Mayahi

International Organizations and Donors • Verdaste KALIMA, Deputy Head of Office, OCHA • Nourou MACKI, Assistant Coordinator, Emergency Coordination Unit, FAO • Giorgi DOLIDZE, Programme Officer, Cash & Vouchers, WFP

Beneficiaries • 50 CFW/Cash Transfer beneficiaries (women household representatives), Comune of Tchake • 25 CFW/Warrant Credit beneficiaries, Maissoura Village (Kanembakache)

Chad ACF/Chad Staff • Jacques TERRENOIRE, Directeur Pays ACF Tchad • Boukary Biri Kassoum, responsable du Dpt Sécurité Alimentaire • Jean Rougy, RH • Frank MANZIAT, CDD Logistique • Peggy MALLER, CDD SMPS • Bruce, WASH Adjoint • Clémence MALET, CD NUT Santé • Jean-Philippe BARROY, Relation bailleurs et reporting • Murielle MASSE, coordo terrain pour BEG (rencontrée à NDjamena) Equipe ACF de la base de Mao : • Victor Lacoste Coordinateur Terrain Kanem. • Hélène Schmidt Log Admin Mao. • Jules RP NUT Santé ; + Sophie (RP MobComm); + Freddy (renfort) ; + Ghislaine (Consultante) • Francesca RP SAME +Ibrahim

Government Officials • Gouverneur du Kanem, à Mao • Secrétaire Général du Gouvernorat, Mao • Préfet de Nokou et le Secrétaire Général de la Préfecture.

International Organizations and Donors • FAO : Mme Florence Le Coz, Sécurité Alimentaire, FAO Tchad • OCHA : Dieudonné Bamouni, chef de bureau OCHA Tchad • UNICEF : Bruno Maes, Représentant Résident Bureau du Tchad • UNICEF, John W Ntambi, chef de la base de Mao pour le Kanem • ECHO : Jane Lewis, Assistante Technique • PAM : Raphaël Chuinard, Chargé de Programme, Ndjamena • PAM, Ousmane Badamasi chef base de Mao; O. Goodman, chargé de programme

Partner Organizations/Local NGOs • OXFAM : Abakar Mahmat Ahmat, Directeur Tchad

Beneficiaries • Chef de village de Barka Drossou Centre • Equipe des infirmiers du CNT de Mondo (Centre Nutritionnel Thérapeutique)

Annex8

Increase in Net Financial Gain to Beneficiaries From Selling Millet at Different Selling Points Using Warrant Credit

Price of Credit Accrued Total Grain Sale Grain Cash Millet10 Secured Interest Repayment Equivalent Balance Value

(70% of (@0.0225/m from Store (CFA) 100kgs) onth) (Kg) (Kg) (CFA)

January 200 14000

April 260 1,260 15,260 58.7 41.3 10,740

June 290 1,890 15,890 54.8 45.2 13,110

July 325 2,205 16,205 49.9 50.1 16,295

10 ACF/Niger monthly market tracking reports for 2012

Annex 9

Surge Support Missions Conducted During the West Africa Drought Emergency

Person Dates Destination Objectif Alvaro Pascual, FS 14/01-22/02 Senegal,Mauritania,Burkina, Mali To assist WARO to prepare Coord EP-Spain ACF Strategy to Sahel crisis (Mitigation, response) Montse Escruela, Nut 12-29/02 Mauritania To formulate Nutrition Coord EP-Spain Response in Guidimaka Helena Valencia, ER 25/04-20/05 Mali To assist mission to re Desk EP-Spain formulate ACF strategy Daria Panetto, Admin 30/04-19/05 in North of Mali Co EP-Spain Juanjo Tarrés, Log Co 30/04-20/05 EP-Spain Montse Escruela, Nut 30/04-19/05 Co EP-Spain Álvaro Pascual, FS Co 30/04-19/05 EP- Spain Filippo Busti, WASH 25/04-19/05 UNDER EP- Spain request Co EP- France, Lucille Grosjean, COM 25/04-19/05 UNDER EP- Spain request Co, EP- France Olivier Aumon, LOG 25/04-10/05 Niger To identify logistics Co EP-France resources to support ACF operations inNorthern Mali UNDER EP- Spain request. William Dufourcq, ER 26/05-17/06 Mauritania To assess needs in refugee Desk EP- France camp in Mbera UNDER EP- Spain request Filippo Busti, WASH 10-22/05 Niger To assess needs in refugee Co EP-France camps in Tillia and Alvaro Pascual, FS Co 18-30/06 UNDER EP- Spain request EP- Spain To formulate ACF response Mohamed Sylla, FS Co 15-24/06 Mauritania To formulate ACF FS EP-Spain response in refugee camps UNDER EP- Spain request Helena Valencia, ER 15-30/06 Mali To follow up the Desk EP- Spain; implementation of emergency response in the North. After this visit, Rafael de Prado GEO DESK (8-18/07) andVincent Stehli OPE Director (04- 12/07) visited the mission

for two weeks. Log Ref in Hqs, Marcial Rodriguez(23/06-06/07) was in mission inMali in this period. William Dufourcq, ER 28/06-06/07 Burkina Faso To assess refugees Desk EP-France situation in the country Filippo Busti, WASH Co EP-Spain Helena Valencia, ER 11-31/08 Mali Gap filling for key posts Desk (Country Director, Juanjo Tarrés, Lo Co 11-31/08 Logistics, Technical and EP-Spain 1-30/09 Nutrition Coordinators ) Florence Le Guelinel , ACF/Paris 16/09-05/10 Alvaro Pascual, FS Co EP- Spain 03-18/12 Montse Escruela, Nut Co EP- Spain

Annex 10

Funding Raised Through Regional Grants and Through Mission-Generated Grants

Country Regional Grants Bilateral/National/Internal Funds Total

Grants Value Percentage Grants Value Percentage Grants Value Percentage (Euro) (Euro) (Euro)

Mauritania 3 1,825,875 44% 11 2,287,424 56% 14 4,133,298 100%

Mali 2 772,943 13% 9 5,181,918 87% 11 5,954,861 100%

Burkina F 3 1.709.828 29% 9 4,252,008 71% 12 5.896.036 100%

Niger 2 1,267,596 14% 9 7,989,642 86% 11 9,257,238 100%

Chad 1 609.833 28% 12 1,590,571 72% 13 2,200,404 100%

Total 6,186,075 27% 16,637,843 73% 22,823,918 100%