Impact Evaluation of the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) Project at African Agricultural Technology Foundation

Introduction

For 10 years (February 2008 – January 2018), AATF led the implementation of the Water Efficient Maize (WEMA) Project partnership supported by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), the Howard G. Buffett Foundation (HGBF), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). WEMA was implemented in six countries – Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia. The aim of the project was to improve food security and rural livelihoods among smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), by developing and deploying drought-tolerant and insect-pest protected maize hybrids to improve yields under moderate drought stress and protecting it from insect damage.

Given the 10 years of implementation, AATF would want to assess WEMA Project’s performance and impact, and thus, seeking the services of an evaluation consultant/consultancy firm to undertake the exercise.

Brief description of AATF

AATF is a not-for-profit organization that embraces a mission of making available, to smallholder farmers, agricultural technologies that were previously not accessible to them. Founded on the premise of tackling poverty and food insecurity through technological interventions, AATF empowers farmers to transform their livelihoods by equipping them with better tools and inputs that would, without the organization’s intervention, take a much longer time to reach them and cost a lot more. These efforts, combined with optimal agricultural practices and product value addition, will contribute to agricultural transformation in Africa leading food and nutrition security including poverty reduction in SSA.

3. Background and Context

Drought continues to ravage rainfed agriculture in the SSA, making farming an increasingly daunting task especially for smallholder farmers, the majority of whom are women, who rely on rainfall to water their crops. Maize is the most widely grown staple crop in Africa – more than 300 million people depend on it as their main food source. It is severely affected by frequent drought events and irregular rainfall, which lead to crop failure, hunger, and poverty. Like drought, insect pests present a challenge for smallholder maize farmers who have limited resources to effectively manage them. Unfortunately, during drought, maize is particularly more susceptible to insect pests and farmers can experience complete loss.

In February 2008, the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project partnership was created to help farmers manage the risk of drought by developing and deploying maize varieties that yield better under drought conditions. For 10 years, the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) led an excellent partnership with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Monsanto and the National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) of Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia to enable the WEMA Project to make significant progress toward the project goal.

The objectives of the Project were:

1. To facilitate production and distribution of drought tolerant and insect-pest resistant maize seeds for end users.
2. To ensure the stewardship of drought tolerant and insect-pest resistant maize inbred lines, hybrids and traits throughout the value chain.
3. To develop and test drought tolerant maize germplasm (source populations, inbred lines and hybrids) through conventional breeding.
4. To develop and test drought tolerant and insect-pest resistant maize germplasm through transgenic trait technology.
5. To support multi-site testing of, and commercial release of, drought tolerant and insect-pest resistant maize hybrids in the WEMA partner countries.
6. To support testing, dissemination, commercialization, adoption and stewardship of conventional and transgenic drought tolerant and insect-pest resistant hybrids in the five target countries.
7. To develop and implement appropriate sub-licensing and intellectual property protection mechanisms for WEMA products.

Evaluation Objective

The general objective of the planned evaluation is to learn from the work and to understand both what difference the project has made and HOW it has made the difference i.e understanding the key success factors for achieving long term change for the target group. During the evaluation, special attention will be paid to sustainability of the interventions and appropriateness of the strategies used, to make recommendations for future programming, strategies and activities which would eventually contribute to sustainable improvement in the livelihoods of target population.

Deliverables

Deliverables should include the following:

• An inception package, outlining: (a) Evaluation design and methodology (including data collection tools, data organization and analysis, sampling procedures, quality assurance and ethical considerations); (b) Work-plan; and (c) Proposed report structure.
• A presentation to and discussion with AATF highlighting a preliminary findings and draft recommendations.
• A draft report to be reviewed by AATF.
• A final report of not more than 40 pages (excluding annexes) including an Executive Summary of max 3 pages.
• A power-point presentation of the main findings, conclusions and recommendations, suitable for AATF to use in presentation of the evaluation results to stakeholders.
• In addition, the evaluators will provide: Completed evaluation questionnaires (in hard /soft copy), cleaned data set for the quantitative part, audio-taped qualitative data, and images from the field.
• All GPS coordinates must be submitted in Arc View GIS format.