39 - Midterm evaluation of Developing inclusive and profitable dairy value chain for pastoralist communities in Borena

Abstract Information: People are usually suffering because of the limited mindset.Improving Dairy market systems in targeted district of Borena in ways that socially and economically empower women and conserve the ecosystem is one of JOA’s intervention that aims to improve livelihood of dairy producing women and youth. The project also in long ran aims to create Efficient and functional dairy Market, confirm sustainable usage and management of natural resources by pastoral and agro pastoral community and support social and economic empowerment of pastoral and agro pastoral women in the community. People used to use direct support from humanitarian interventions and this project is a project that struggles to bring sustainable change through identifying the root cause for market failures for serving the poor and through private sector engagement.This is done through subsidy rather than direct provision.The evaluation has been conducted to evaluate the level of buy in for the new system from the community and private scetor.

Relevance Statement: With the aim of developing an inclusive and profitable dairy value chains for pastoralist communities in Borana zone.By developing profitable and inclusive diary value chains for pastoralists and agro-pastoralist communities, the Project is designed to address the root causes of dairy marketing system. The aim of the project were developing an inclusive and profitable dairy value chains for pastoralist communities in Borana zone, the Project begun in October 2020 in five Kebeles within Moyale Woreda for 5,351 women and youth. The purpose of this evaluation is to establish if the Project has been able to achieve its target as well as assessing if any system changes have come about as a result of the Project implementation from October 2020 to July 2022. The evaluation team applied mixed methods approach involving secondary data review, individual interviews; key informant interviews (KIIs), focus group discussions (FGDs) as well as observations. The approach is summarized in an evaluation design matrix showing the source of data, method of data collection, and the tool used to answer each evaluation question. In total, the team collected quantitative and qualitative information from 15 KIIs (17 participants), 12 FGDs (111 participants) and 157 project beneficiaries. The qualitative data was organized and analysed based on a framework developed for this purpose, a context analysis was applied during analysis and the quantitative data was collected using online tablet devices with KoBoToolbox application and was analysed using SPSS. AS a result, the Project goal “improving household resilience” is considered satisfactory due to the fact that the Project has contributed to beneficiaries’ resilience absorptive, adaptive and transformative capacity. The dairy market systems in targeted district of Borena improved in ways that socially and economically empower women and conserve the ecosystems. The degree of progress towards the Project strategic objective is encouraging but needs more attention, this is because, and the Project has improved average level of impact of women in formal/informal decision-making structures. In addition efficient dairy market systems functional in targeted districts in Borena. the extent to which these results will continue beyond the life of the Project is promising as the Project has actively improved the capacity of the beneficiaries and this change will remain within the Project area. Moreover, the Programme used appropriate strategies and approaches that can easily be implemented by the beneficiaries, for example VSLAs groups and NRM management committee will continue beyond the life of the Project period. Structures and actors strengthened and established by the Project to support the input market system such as lead firm, MSP and milk collection centers might not continue after as it has limited actors. We Recommend that it is essential to institutionalize the Multi-Stakeholder Platform (MSP), develop evidence-based documents, use the platform to influence critical project issues and it is crucial that a clear gender strategy and men engagement tools are designed and implemented. The “co-investment model” needs due consideration, better to revise the whole business model, in fact, this needs further detail discussion, assessment and inventory monitoring.