What are the differences between agricultural and other sector-wide approaches (SWAps)? Why have agricultural sector-wide approaches experienced more problems than other SWAps? This paper by the Centre for Aid and Public Expenditure of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) addresses these questions by comparing the agricultural sector with social sector programmes.
Sector-wide approaches were developed to address specific problems in the relationship between governments and donors. Large numbers of poorly co-ordinated projects with no common policy framework led to poor sustainability and uneven service provision. SWAps bring all activities into a single expenditure framework negotiated between partners, based on agreed policies and procedures for disbursing funds and monitoring performance. Although different sectors suffer similar problems, the agricultural sector has fundamental characteristics that make developing and implementing SWAps more difficult than in social sectors. These are:
- The most important government roles in supporting agriculture do not relate to public expenditure, but to policy issues. These include exchange rates, land reform, trade policies and prices.
- The most important public expenditures for supporting agriculture may not be in the agricultural sector. For example, investments in roads may have greater impact.
- Much of what the Ministry of Agriculture is doing may be better done by the private sector and an effective agricultural strategy may involve downsizing the Ministry that is responsible for implementing it.
- Unlike health, education and roads, there is no single technology that can be applied across the sector. This is because problems and solutions cannot be defined for the whole agriculture sector.
- Government is a minor player in the agriculture sector, which may employ up to 80 per cent of the population but is dominated by private sector producers.
Caution needs to be exercised in applying SWAps to agriculture. There are large numbers of potentially warring stakeholders, which makes forging a consensus difficult. The necessary reforms to the Ministry of Agriculture must be agreed before the SWAp, and it may be more effective to work with central economic ministries that have nothing to lose from reform. In addition:
- A high degree of reliance needs to be placed on national staff and national systems to achieve the coverage of services needed to achieve feasible costs.
- The SWAp needs to be modified to include aspects relating to national capacity building without the expensive machinery of a national SWAp.
- The sustainable livelihoods approach should be institutionally anchored in the Ministry of Local Government, not Agriculture.
