Fostering demand-oriented service delivery? A historical reconstruction of first experiences with ‘private funding, public delivery’ extension in Benin

Abstract

This paper examines newly emerging patterns of agricultural extension in the context of wider liberalization of agricultural input supply, marketing and credit provision in Benin. It assesses whether the promises of privatisation were met in the case of the Sasakawa Global 2000 project. Thus, it assesses the extent to which service delivery became demand-orientated, flexible and effective in linking of new technology with complementary institutional designs. In order to gain insight in the dynamics through which such outcomes may be realized, the study zooms in on the process through which the project evolved. It is demonstrated that the PSG 2000 Bénin project did not contribute much to realizing the promises and expectations of privatized service delivery. An important conclusion is that whether services become ‘demand-oriented’ or not does not primarily depend on the formal funding and delivery arrangement, but rather on the quality of the process in which demand and supply are articulated and matched. This contradicts with the policy assumptions underlying privatization programmes.

Acknowledgments

This article is the output from a research project funded by the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO). The authors would like to thank the Board of WOTRO. The authors also thank the extension authorities of the Ministry of Agriculture (MAEP), the extension agents of the Regional Centres for Agricultural Promotion (CeRPAs) and farmers who freely gave their time to make this research project possible, and commented on earlier drafts. We are also grateful to Prof. A.A. Valentin (University of Abomey-Calavi) and Prof. A.W. van den Ban (University of Wageningen) for their support and valuable information for this study.

Notes

1. See e.g. Alex et al. 2004, Beynon et al. 1998, Leeuwis 2000a, Rivera and Zijp 2002, Sulaiman and van den Ban 2003, Swanson and Samy 2002.

2. Sasakawa Global 2000 is an international NGO working in many developing countries (such as Soudan, Ghana, Nigeria, Mali, Guinea, etc.) and PSG 2000 is the Beninese branch.

3. This was called Centre d'Action Regionale pour le Développement Rural (CARDER). But the name changed in 2004 to Centre Regional pour la Promotion Agricole (CeRPA) in order to take into account policies for promoting production and marketing chains of food and cash crops, and to get in line with the government's decentralization policy. In 2003, districts in Benin became Communes with the elected local governments.

4. See Tossou 1996; Von de Luhe 1991.

5. This project was funded by many donors: the World Bank (WB), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) and the French Government-Funded Agency for Development (AF) and Benin's government (see Montaldi 1992, MDR 1993, World Bank 2003).

6. Indeed, in most regions in Benin, women do not do commercial maize production. They are active in the production of cowpea and leguminous crops (tomatoes, etc.). Even in the Plateau Adja (department of Couffo, South West) where women do maize production, the harvest is used for food and not for commercialisation (see Agbo 1995; Biaou 1997).

7. These findings are similar to those obtained by Tripp (1993) in an in-depth survey of the reaction to recommended technologies in the maize PTPs and implemented by the PSG 2000 Ghana.