TIMBUKTU Final Evaluation report Draft V-5 1/14/2104 (Timbuktu Food Security Program – TFSI/MYAP) Agreement No. FFP-A-00-08-00069-00 Submission Date: January 17, 2014 Michael Short, Evaluation Coordinator Yacouba Sidibe (Agriculture), Evaluation Consultant (Timbuktu) 1 Executive Summary This report presents an assessment of the residual beneficial impacts of Africare/Mali’s Timbuktu Food Security Initiative Multi-Year Activity Program (TFSI/MYAP) that was conducted 20 months after the forced evacuation of project staff from the Timbuktu Region and the suspension of all program activities during Implementation Year (IY4) of this five-year program. Due to extraordinary conditions of insecurity at the end of the project period (IY4), a more complete final evaluation that would have included a random survey and targeted interview could not be completed. This report is based on a limited series of individual and group interviews with local Government of Mali (GoM) officials, community-based volunteers, producer organizations, and beneficiary groups in the Naifunké and Goundam Cercles in November 2013. The interviews were conducted over a five-day period (November 2-8, 2013) by an independent expert, Mr. Yacouba Sidibe, based on a USAID-approved Terms of Reference (included as Annex 5.1) and using standardized interview formats developed by a three person evaluation team working in collaboration with senior Africare/Mali program staff previously assigned to the TFSI/MYAP program. (Sample interview forms included as Annex 5.6) The programmatic focus of the five-year TFSI/MYAP was on these three Strategic Objectives (SOs): SO1 - The capacity of communities to manage risks and cope with shocks resulting from vulnerability will be strengthened - This included TFSI/MYAP activities related to community- based adult literacy programs, developing and training Early Warning System and Emergency Response (CEWS/ERS) and village Food Security Committees, the distribution of FFP-sourced food commodities to vulnerable households (safety net), the recovery of malnourished infants, and to support Food-for-Work (FFW) and Food-for-Training (literacy) activities. SO2 - Households’ access to food is improved - Another set of project activities focused on increasing and expanding local agricultural, livestock and fisheries production, including the development of Village Irrigated Perimeters (VIPs), introducing advanced production techniques1 and improved varieties of goats and chickens, improving the skills of volunteer lead farmers and Government of Mali (GoM) agricultural agents, developing community food storage facilities, supporting the formation and training of producer groups, and supporting the expansion of village-managed credit/savings funds. SO3 - Improved health and nutrition of vulnerable populations – A third set of activities focused on improving community and household health and nutrition, with particular emphasis on women and children under five. This included support for project-trained Village Nutrition Educators (VNEs) and Traditional Birth Attendants or matrones (TBAs), community-managed monthly infant growth monitoring and reporting, community-based malnutrition rehabilitation through HEARTH sessions and home visits, VNE activities to improve household practices and behaviors through Information, Education and Communication (IEC) sessions related to health, 1 For example, the System for Rice Intensification (SRI), System for Wheat Intensification (SBI) and a fish culture demonstration project. 2 nutrition, and sanitation, and construction and management of key community water supplies (wells). The evaluation concluded that: The community-based organizations established and trained during the TFSI/MYAP are present and active in all villages contacted. The evaluators agreed that their ability to peacefully adapt to the occupation and to overtly collaborate with the occupiers while covertly circumventing many of their restrictions constituted an active and well-organized resistance movement. Despite extraordinary challenges, village producer groups, with varying degrees of success, were able to continue agricultural production. Those groups farming on Village Irrigated Perimeters (VIPs) and having effective producer groups that were able to access key inputs without any outside GoM or NGO assistance were able to better cope with the occupation and the challenges to food security. Recession agriculture, particularly in the important Lake Télé area, was less productive due the occupation’s restriction on groups and travel. The limitations imposed on women by the occupiers had a severe negative affect on the ability of women’s groups to produce vegetables on community gardens and to be active in the economy. Villages that continued to produce on VIPs reported that harvests during the height of the occupation, the 2012/2013 production season, were the highest seen in the previous five years. The ability to produce on VIPs also had a tendency to stabilize the population, in that fewer community members left as IDPs. Although the fish culture demonstration project failed when the pump and fencing were looted, many producer groups expressed an interest in the practice as future activity. Due to time and travel constraints and the continuing movement of IDPs, the evaluation was unable to neither determine the magnitude of the occupation and conflict on pastoral communities in the project nor determine the impact on animal herds. Village small savings/credit groups (caisses) continued to operate in secret during the occupation and their cash assets were a valuable contribution to sustaining food security in some households and in many cases, where the sole source of cash available to the communities. The village Health/Nutrition Volunteers and Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) supported and trained during the TFSI/MYAP were also active during the occupation, but the complete disappearance of the GoM’s health system, including GoM health agents, CSCOMs, and referral centers, and the lack of basic materials and supplies, severely limited their effectiveness. Access to medical services was severely restricted during the occupation period because of a fear of traveling, restrictions on traveling due to a rebel imposed curfew, the lack of public/private vehicle transportation system, and the need to transport severe cases into the larger towns by treatment by Merlin, the Red Cross, or any remaining private providers. The evaluation concluded that the security situation in the Niafunké, Goundam, and Diré Cercles is much improved. The displaced GoM civil servants have returned and the basic structures of 3 governance, security, and basic services are improving. The security conditions in these three Cercles would allow a restart of targeted recovery activities, and are recommended in the short- term to allow communities to cope with the coming “lean” period, to prepare for 2014/2015 growing seasons, to assist returning IDP households integrate back into their communities, and to re-establish support for health/nutrition volunteers and TBAs. The security situation in Timbuktu Cercle, however, remains highly uncertain and program operations outside the city of Timbuktu are not recommended without further consideration of what may still be an extreme risk. 1.0 Introduction 1.1. Context The original goal of the five-year Africare/Mali’s TFSI/MYAP program was to increase food security in 60 targeted communities in the Timbuktu Region of northern Mali by: (a) enhancing community capacity to deal with risk and vulnerability; (b) increasing levels of agricultural and livestock production; (c) increasing household incomes through participation in commercial agricultural activities; and (d) improving the health and nutritional status of targeted households, with a focus on women and children under five. All of the activities included in the project emphasized the direct participation of targeted communities in all activity planning and implementation through village-level community Food Security Committees. In early-2012, Mali was severely affected by a food security crisis and like many other areas of the Sahel zone, experienced below a normal annual harvest in some areas caused by a period extreme drought and conditions of rainfall variability. In March 2012, FEWS NET reported that the total national cereal production was 27% higher than the 2006-2102 average, but that large parts of the Sahel zone, including northern areas of the Kayes, Koulikoro, the Segou Regions, and the inland delta in the Mopti Region experienced an agro-pastoral production deficit as high as 50%. In some localized areas, deficit estimates were as high as 80%. 2 Also, in early-2012, an already fragile food security situation devolved into an extraordinarily complex emergency when simultaneously the country faced a rapidly deteriorating security situation in northern Mali and an unprecedented period of political instability in the south. The 2011 collapse Libyan government sparked a sudden influx of Malian expatriates fleeing the Libyan civil war and fueled a resurgent Tuareg independence movement. The fragile peace established by the Algiers Accords quickly disintegrated when in January 2012, a new group, the secular National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), began attacking Malian army camps in northern Mali3 and eventually declared most of northern Mali an independent sovereign nation; the Independent State of Azawad (later, on May 26, 2012, as the Islamic Republic