A reforestation programme has been started, but it is too early to assess its impact. The mission also noted a good mastery of the techniques taught by the project. Due to a lack of staff, there has been no technical monitoring of the groups or the microenterprises. The credit segment proved to be a setback, because the population did not clearly understand that loans, unlike grants, have to be repaid. In the mission s opinion, the suspension of credit is likely to harm agricultural development in the target area.
Women are most conspicuously underrepresented.
Nevertheless, the project has been able to organize activities for promoting literacy and for learning new fish-farming techniques. Women who have participated in the training are now better able to define their problems and to propose solutions. The mission believes that the marginalization of women will have a negative impact on the sustainability of progress obtained through the project, since women s groups are responsible for the collection and handling of fees and housing rents and the organization of maintenance work. The project has also suffered from the weakness of technical management in several components, in particular the Socio-economic Infrastructures component and in the Village Capital Development Fund. Although the concept at the time of formulation was ambitious, it was and remains valid eight years later.