Agriculture remains a priority sector in Malawi’s pursuit of economic transformation and poverty reduction, and the importance of irrigation in agricultural intensification is emphasized in the country’s development strategies such as the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy II and III. Independent Development Evaluation has conducted an evaluation of the African Development Bank’s (AfDB or "the Bank") support to two irrigation infrastructure development projects in Malawi of UA 15 million each, completed in 2014 and 2017, respectively. These were the 2006-2014 Smallholder Crop Production and Marketing Project that covered 13 districts across the nation and the 2009-2017 Agriculture Infrastructure Services Project, which covered seven districts in Southern Malawi.
The evaluation aimed to generate knowledge and provide lessons to maximize the impact of ongoing and future irrigation development interventions. It applied a counterfactual approach, comparing the project beneficiaries with a control group, to measure and attribute the effects of the interventions.
The evaluation found the irrigation projects to have had a positive impact on crop productivity and crop diversity, including substantial revenue increase of participating farmers, but crop intensity did not change as expected. Despite improved food security there where effective local leadership and markets existed, and reductions in poverty, no evidence of impact on child nutrition was found. A small, unexpected negative impact on health was also indicated, and the evaluation found differentiated effects on female- vs. male-headed households. However, the benefits of the interventions are highly unlikely to be sustained, due to weak organizational capacity at local level, poor scheme design, inadequate markets, and beneficiaries’ sense of dependency for inputs and maintenance.
The evaluation generated the following key lessons:
- Inadequate attention to the capacity and governance systems of local institutions undermines achievement of sustainable outcomes from irrigation development.
- Building market infrastructure is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to create markets for farmers.
- Technical quality of the construction designs of irrigation schemes should be ensured to enhance the effectiveness of the projects’ outcomes.
The evaluation recommended the Bank to support capacity and governance systems of local institutions, to enhance agricultural market access and to engage in knowledge work and policy dialogue.
Task Manager: Girma Earo Kumbi, Principal Evaluation Officer
The Impact Evaluation of the African Development Bank-supported small-scale irrigation projects in Malawi was discussed during the learning event held on 06th October 2021 on the theme of Fostering integrated solutions for sustainable development impact: Lessons from IDEV’s evaluations.