Thematic evaluation of sustainability of agriculture-focused projects in the Czech Official Development Assistance

Bc. Lenka Černínová

Master's thesis

Abstract:

Agriculture continues to be the most important economic sector for 70% of rural population living in the Global South. Farmers continue to face low productivity of their production, unstable agricultural policy, population growth and climate changes. Therefore, there is a need to improve their economic self-sufficiency, among others, by effective international development cooperation.This thesis is focused on Czech bilateral official development Aid to agriculture and its sustainability since 2008, the year when the CzDA was established. Firstly, the study quantitatively and qualitatively analyses 60 bilateral agricultural projects to find out which are the main implementing organisations, target countries, financial tools and techniques integrated in the Czech ODA to agriculture. Secondly, on the basis of rather low project sustainability, the study employs nine IFAD preconditions of sustainability to evaluate the level of its incorporation into 15 Czech agricultural bilateral projects. The Czech Republic considers agriculture as a sector priority in all program countries. Implementing organisations focus mainly on non-formal agricultural education, supply of machinery and equipment and capacity building of public servants. The Czech ODA to agriculture is dominated by one NGDO. After NGDO sector, the second most involved is academic sector followed by private sector and state institutions. Agricultural projects operate with rather small budget and are financed by three different types of financial tools. We found out that the sustainability of Czech development assistance to agriculture is compromised by low reliability of project partners, rather insufficient length of project implementation period, imprecise monitoring and missing exit strategy among others.

Keywords

agriculture, sustainability, donor, implementing organisations, evaluation, aid effectiveness

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 22. 4. 2016

Thesis defence

• Supervisor: Ing. Jiří Hejkrlík, Ph.D.

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague

Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences

Master programme / field:
Tropical Agriculture / International Development and Agricultural Economics