5. ASSESSMENT OF IMPLEMENTATION AND OUTPUT (continue)

5.4.3 Field activities in the Small Water Bodies Project

The five subprojects within the Small Water Bodies Project are not related to one single immediate objective. Instead, they are related to all three objectives, except in the case of the database project, which only relates to Objective II.

On the activity level the purpose of each activity is more directly related to a single immediate objective. Even here, however, there are several cases where one activity is related to more than one immediate objective.

Even if the most logical structure to follow when assessing if the projects really address the objectives had been to study the activities under each objective they should serve, this has been avoided. This would have led to a very fragmented picture of the projects. Therefore each table below addresses one pilot project and an extra column to indicate the closest immediate objective has been added, to facilitate the assessment overview.

Table 16. Regional small water bodies potential (SWB/POT): Establishment of a regional database of information on small reservoirs for use in fisheries management and enhancement

PILOT PROJECT ONE - SWB/MLW

Table 17. Small reservoir fisheries management and production, Southern Province, Malawi: Fishery management guidelines for three classes of small reservoirs: community, private and government owned

PILOT PROJECT TWO-SWB/ZAM

Table 18. Small reservoir fisheries management production, Southern Province, Zambia: Small reservoir fishery management guidelines for local communities and governments

PILOT PROJECT THREE - SWB/ZIM

Table 19. Small reservoir fisheries management and production, Southern Province Zimbabwe: Small reservoir fishery management strategies for local communities

PILOT PROJECT FOUR - SWB/URT

Table 20.1. Assessment of Small Water Bodies Resource Potential, Morogoro Region Tanzania: Assessment of fishery resource potential and elaboration of fishery management strategies at Mindu and Hombolo Dams

Table 20.2. Elaboration of SWB fishery management strategies, Morogoro Region, Tanzania: Elaboration of fishery management strategies at Mindu and Hombolo Dams

5.4.4 Small Water Bodies - Overall assessment of Objective I

Development of methods for the evaluation of small water bodies fisheries potential

• Seen by SWB staff as a long-term process and not as a valid short term objective. It is assumed that it should normally require production data, physico-chemical, biological and socio-economical data from a large number of SWBs over a long period. Obviously the academic side of the problem is overestimated. A rapid estimate of the fishery potential based on limited data of experimental catches and hydrobiological observations and a limited number of socio-economic key factors would be sufficiently accurate and acceptable for the scope of the project. As still more than one year is available for processing results, the realisation of this objective is foreseeable within the lifespan of the present project.
• Attainment of the objective requires compilation of general baseline information on small reservoirs including physical inventories and limnological/fishery characteristics which can be obtained through biological and limnological sampling on a regular basis in selected dams or by monitoring fisheries statistics.
• For this purpose 23 dams have been selected in four different countries covering a large variation of types of dams in relation to physical characteristics, ownership, legislation, fish communities, biological and socio-economic profiles, etc.… (See background information for all reservoirs in Annex 23). The regional character of the project justifies this choice which provides an important range of information on fish potential in dams submitted to very different biological and socio-economic settings. The streamlined and regular activities in pilot projects one to three (Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi) have given promising results to attain the objective. In pilot project four (Tanzania) some scattered activities have been realized which gave no concrete results for the present objective.
• Pilot projects one to three in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi have studied a set of 21 reservoirs generally with rather limited fish stocks, in most cases as a result of stocking. Since the beginning of 1995 a new adequate workplan has been followed which focuses on a streamlined similar follow-up within those three pilot projects. A standardised data collection protocol has been established (Annex 24). In addition, as up to the end of 1995 no reliable yields were available, a common protocol has been developed based on creel surveys to estimate fish production data (Annex 25). Each selected reservoir is to be sampled on a monthly basis, but in some cases sampling is done only bimonthly. This protocol implemented by staff of relevant national institutions (DoF and DoA), is adequate and efficiently implemented in all three pilot projects: physico-chemical sampling is not too detailed and only basic information is gathered at a moderate frequency. It is however regrettable that no data are gathered on food availability (through plankton and benthos sampling) and rather simple food preferences of fish (stomach content analyses). These latter data indeed can lead to recommendations for the introduction of well adapted species to the artificial dam conditions.
• Pilot project four: SWB/URT, Tanzania with scope similar to the other three pilot projects follows a different workplan. Two rather large and intensively fished dams near Morogoro and Dodoma respectively are studied. A few isolated limnological data have been obtained. Based on some analyses of catches from local fishermen it appears that daily fish yields are rather high. Catches consist mostly of small to very small fish (i.e. Barbus, Haplochromisand small mormyrids). Based on those observations it was presumed that the dams might be overfished or close to their maximum production. It is very interesting to investigate the fishery potential of dams where the majority of the stock consists of small fish and more precisely small species. Such a situation indeed most probably results from previous overfishing of larger species. But it does not mean that the fishery potential is not interesting for the surrounding community. If such overfishing has been done in the past, it is possible that a new balance mainly dominated by small fish is established in the fish community : an artificial fish community in an artificial SWB.
• This kind of problem goes to the core of SWB-projects interest and as virtually nothing has been studied on this topic, it would have been logic that the project activities would concentrate on fishery statistics and catch data analyses as was foreseen by the workplan. However, this was not done mainly due to the fact that there was no close follow-up by an ALCOM biologist. It was also due to minor and irrelevant practical constraints, i.e. no transport (no bicycle and no resources for bus transport) for the DoF staff who were contacted for the monitoring of fish statistics. This latter constraint was advanced to explain the irregular or non existing fishery statistics and it was reported that local resources might not suffice for monitoring management at the dams. Ironically, the working budget of SWB/URT for 1996 is still virtually untouched.
• Instead of monitoring fish catches and analysing fishery statistics, socio-economic surveys and awareness meetings with dam committees were organised. On these meetings the fisheries problems (use of bad fishing gear, splashing, etc..) were identified and discussed and management strategies were proposed. These problems (which in fact are well known by everyone concerned with lake fisheries and definitely also by fishermen) were very nicely advertised in posters and pamphlets. Of course, the Dam Committees agreed to collaborate and promised to manage the fisheries of their dams according to the posters and the regulations foreseen. But it is predictable that if during alternative is found for an existing resource, virtually nothing will change : the fishermen will continue fishing with the same gear (no other gear was given anyway) and the most welcome small fish will continue to be caught.
• In conclusion, it is clear that the Tanzania pilot project has missed its goal: it probably could have been one of the most interesting pilot projects if the workplan had been followed. Unique information and management advices could have been provided for a small-fish species fishery and its sustainability. It was suggested to phase out this pilot project due to the different scope and the high cost of supervision. It would be better to reconsider it and review it.

5.4.5 Small Water Bodies - Overall assessment of objective II

Assessment of the resources of small water bodies fisheries and their fishery potential

• This objective aims at (1) setting up a detailed regional database of information on small reservoirs for use in fisheries management and enhancement; and (2) presenting a framework for estimating the fishery potential of the region.
• The establishment of a regional database (Annex 26 gives the standardised format for the inventory) on reservoirs including socio-economic indicators is a long ongoing process which is presently executed by ALCOM staff at HQ with a high professional approach. Until now, the data gathering on all reservoirs in the region has not been completed. Indeed, some of this information is very difficult to obtain and it is foreseeable that this activity will have to be regularly updated, a task which definitely will go beyond the lifespan of the present SWB-project.
• The execution of this task seriously suffers from understaffing. Only the small reservoir specialist and a socio-economist are attached to this pilot project for about 20% or less of their time. The socio-economist could not contribute until now due to his high workload in the SWB and Aquaculture field projects (8 field projects in total until the arrival in 9/95 of a second socio-economist who took over half of the field projects). Moreover, there is no regional counterpart staff involved to assure continuity for the regional SWB programme and for managing the database in the future. Specialised counterpart staff should be found, especially for the future as the database should be further developed. Nevertheless the work on the database is carried out efficiently but slowly. A success is the integration of the data from the SWB database into a geographical interface. This makes all data easily accessible to everyone who wishes information on any reservoir in the SADC database. Collaboration with the FAO Food Security Remote Sensing Project has boosted the work of SWB/POT through the use of specially designed software (from FAO) and the SADC vector data-set (Section 3.9.3).
• Integration of the SWB database in other information systems is explicitly aimed at. Indeed, the SWB database holds a large information potential for fisheries, health, nutrition and water management in the SADC Region. It contributes to an important information gathering process, as do other FAO programmes (such as Remote Sensing, Food Security).
• The information component of the SWB project is strong and interesting but not enough advertised. Its activities are often ignored by NGO's or important field Institutions and Organisations. It is advisable that ALCOM (and SWB in particular), sets up its own information network which should inform all interested governmental and non-governmental organisations about resource management of SWBs.
• An all over fishery potential still has to be determined for most of the region. A first draft report of production estimates has been prepared in 1995 for the five countries where enough information was available. An annual potential fish production of 30000 tonnes was estimated for the included reservoirs. Apparently, these data were inaccurate and the draft report has been shelved. At present, attempts are being made for more accurate estimates based on production data obtained from SWB in pilot projects, from countries and from literature data. The work is going on and it is foreseeable that good results for several areas can be presented by the end of the present SWB project.

5.4.6 Small Water Bodies - Overall assessment - Objective III

The provision of feasible methods and guidelines for enhancement and management of fish production in small water bodies by local communities

• Progress on this item has been made mainly through work in selected SWB of the pilot projects: results of biological sampling combined with data of socio-economic surveys (PRAs, creel surveys, Social Mapping, etc.) have provided sound baselines for enhancement strategies.
• Enhancement mechanisms (e.g. habitat improvement, improvement of existing fishing gears, introduction of appropriate fishing techniques, stocking, cage culture, banning of destructive fishing techniques, etc…) and recommendations on their use have been amply reported. Feasible methods and guidelines for enhancement and management of fish production by local communities (community-based approach) have been developed and are tested in pilot projects. Through participatory socio-economic investigations qualitative assessments of the communities around the dams have been made and have given valuable information about the communities, their problems and priorities, the users and uses of reservoirs, management schemes, rules and regulations, etc.. Recently, socio-economic inquiries have been directed within the community using a technique called Social Mapping, which showed a/o. that most households are food insecure for at least a few months every year. A technical decision tree for fisheries enhancement in communal SWB's has been elaborated (Annex 27).
• Successes have been achieved on fisheries management in Tanzania (dam committees are now managing fisheries), in Malawi (exploitation of government dams through licences which however appear not to be applied very strictly, banning of destructive fisheries), in Zambia (banning of destructive fisheries, dam committees) and Zimbabwe (decrease in destructive fishing, additional stocking and restocking). In all pilot project areas, the awareness around fisheries issues has been built both at the community and at the local government level. Fisheries co-management has been effectively put in place in two of four countries.
• The enhancement and improved management activities seem to be most promising and time will show their effects. If a follow-up of SWB-related activities has to be foreseen, they definitely should become the subject of considerable extension practices.

5.4.7 Activities of ALCOM Headquarters

Table 21. ALCOM Headquarters: Administration and management of the whole programme and increased awareness about aquaculture development issues, potentials, and limitations in the member countries of the region

5.4.8 Assessment of the activities of ALCOM Headquarters

Headquarters is seen as the persons working together at present at the ALCOM office in Harare (Figure 3). This means that the responsible coordinators for the aquaculture projects as well as for the Small Water Body project are included. Librarians, financial staff and secretaries also.

There is a complex relationship between immediate objectives, workplans, target areas, and activities in headquarters. In principle however, top management (manager or management group) is responsible for supporting the ultimate goals of the organisation, in this case called development objectiveas stated in the Terms of Reference:

“increase cash income and/or annual protein component in the diet of rural communities, achieved through increased production of fish from small-scale aquaculture integrated with suitable farming systems and from improved management of small water bodies.”

There is no workplan on the level of the development objective, which makes it hard to check whether the practical design of the work in headquarters corresponds to accepted policy or not. The task of the ALCOM organisation however, has been interpreted earlier (Section 4.2) where it is defined as transfer and develop knowledgeon feasible aquaculture methods for smallholder farmers, for future adaptation in less developed areas in the SADC Region. This may be seen as traditional R&D-activity, in a non-traditional area.

When it comes to the practical activities in accomplishing this role in headquarters, the formal documents still give little guidance. The first immediate objective for the Core programme is formulated with headquarters in mind:

“Administration and management of the whole programme and increased awareness about aquaculture development issues, potentials, and limitations in the member countries of the region.”

The first administrative part is specified in the Workplans (Section 5.4.7). The second part about creating awareness is applied in a much softer way.

There is another immediate purpose for the Core Programme, which is not directly covered by the workplans, concerning development of institutions to support fish farmers. This will be discussed below.

When looking at the total set of workplans (or the compiled progress reports²⁰) for ALCOM headquarters and its pilot projects, the impression is given of a rather decentralised organisation, where the main part of development activities is taking place in the field. Given that more than 40 percent of the resources are spent for the central activities, this is not possible. It is obvious that headquarters also performs a large proportion of the operative (development) activities. If ALCOM's centre mainly had an administrative role the resources spent should not correspond to more than 5 to 15 percent of total expenditure, if it was an efficient organisation.

With or without support from the administrative documents, ALCOM's headquarters obviously performs more tasks than the administrative, informative and regional tasks listed in the workplans above. To come closer to the real structure, headquarters activities will be divided into two main parts, management and operation (of development activities).

As the workplans give very little help to see what is really going on in the centre of the organisation, the evaluation mission will try to make a description of how good management usually works and try to find out how close this is to ALCOM's situation. The tasks of the operative (R&D) activities will follow the same pattern.

²⁰ e.g. Progress Report 1995, for the 9th Steering Committee Meeting

(a) Assessment of management

In public organisations, NGOs and the like, there is always a risk that management will be evaluated according to which extent the manager conforms to the bureaucratic system. In the case of ALCOM, this means delivering the workplans in time, using the “right” words giving priorities to the needs of the donors in the information system, etc. To avoid this fallacy, the important difference between two types (or two parts) of a composite management will be discussed.

In classical literature, two ideal types of management are considered, either administrative or strategic.

• Administrative management is usually oriented towards stability of the system, by improving the efficiency of all existing routines (by “AD”, Administrative Development). Typical for this type of management are the controllingtasks. Coordination to avoid duplication is a typical task. Large part of the attention paid to ALCOM's workplans would be an indication of this kind of orientation. Accounting systems are important, and steering into the future is made by reflecting backwards. It is sometimes called “Rear-mirror management”. ALCOM's way of notviolating the donors-FAO-SADC-systems demand for information and documentation, and keeping up as some of its more important functions to prepare meetings and procedures in this decision making process, is an indication of an administratively dominated management.

• Strategic management is more oriented towards effectivity, i.e. changing the whole system (by “OD”, Organisational Development). Decision making processes are important, but very often swiftness is favoured before quality of the decisions. In this context, it is important to decentralise as much as possible, and “flat” (indifference from deep hierarchical) organisations are preferred.

Analysis is important in both administrative and strategic management. In the strategic one, however, not for coordinating purposes but for resources distribution purposes, to increase efficiency.

Still, the most important aspect of strategic management is when focusing the policy making function²¹. The targeting function in ALCOM's activities corresponds to this, but not as a reflection of the signals from the donors, but as an independent creative activity for reorientation by the management (acting instead of reacting).

There are many indications that ALCOM's management belongs more to the administrative type than to the strategic one. From that perspective it is evident that management capacity has been good, and the programme has been well administered. Failures (e.g. in Gaza Province, Mozambique) have been outside the control of management (drought and ownership problems).

From a more strategic management point of view, it is possible to make more critical remarks in relation to the same example: no efforts should have been made to fulfil the workplan. It should have been changed instead. A general and paradoxical remark is also suitable, when looking at the total set of successfully completed activities in the workplans: R&D activities always include a risk. Too few failures indicate too low ambitions. This is definitely a management problem.

²¹ In modern management theory this is discussed in terms of “pathfinding”, being the necessary creative function to make projects sucessful.

(b) Assessment of operative activities.

The operative activities, according to our interpretation of the objectives, should be related to the second half of the first immediate objective:

… and increased awareness about aquaculture development issues, potentials, and limitations in the member countries of the region."

The third immediate objective also states:

Increased support by national and local development institutions and farmers themselves for the sustained promotion among smallholder farmers of the fish culture methods and systems developed by the Programme.

No workplan specifies the tasks for the central operative activities in accordance with these objectives.

When examining what tasks ALCOM's headquarters performs in reality, one can list the following:

• Information dissemination is a very important task in the total “ALCOM Model”, as demonstrated in Section 4.3.2. It is obvious that this is much more than administration. It includes a lot of information gathering, processing, database development/maintenance, publication, search services, communication, etc. It is closely related to the regional issues, which is the theme of the next section.

During the field visits, a couple of question marks appeared when it was found that NGOs in Southern Zimbabwe supported the development of new dams without knowing anything about ALCOM as the central actor and innovator in this area. These are, however, only seen as exceptions. It is impossible to fully cover even the most central actors in the field. The evaluation mission instead expresses all confidence in the information service activities, as said in several places in this report.

• Regional development is another task, which is covered by the workplans. Valuable information services have been given here, but the evaluation mission is of the opinion that the ambitions have been too low so far. The pilot programme contains excellent opportunities for comparative research, which should be taken care of better at headquarters level. One country actively learning from another is the essence of regional cooperation. What is possible in Zambia should be possible in Tanzania, when it concerns either methods to manage small ponds or how to organise extension services in ministries.

Special methodological development on comparative research and cross-sectoral development strategies are recommended. Policy analysis would be fruitful.

• Backstopping. When a car breaks down during field work, or when a new disease breaks out in a fish pond the emergency call will be answered from Harare, sometimes with technical backstopping from FAO, Rome. These kinds of activities are very important, not only to keep the projects going, but also to keep up motivation by showing that the central organisation really cares.

Operational backstopping needed when ALCOM headquarters has a problem with implementation or even interpretation of decisions may come both from FAO/donors and SADC member countries. It also happens that backstopping is done in the other direction, meaning that part of headquarters' tasks is to support FAO HQ in their decision-making process, by describing and explaining the reality behind the papers.

Backstopping activities may be time-consuming, but they seem to have worked well with few complaints. One of these concerns a short period, when the FAO headquarters was reorganised in 1996 (Section 7.2).

• Research and development (R&D) are among the most important activities although they are not reflected in the workplans.

ALCOM is not engaged in “simple coordination” of any pilot project. Headquarters' activities, in the dominating culture called “technical assistance”, should be called “Action Research”. It contains two way communication between headquarters' staff and the pilot projects. On one hand, there is an active supervision of activities, based on scientific experience. On the other hand, there is a gathering of information, synthesising and report writing in the traditional academic way. Several persons from headquarters take part in these activities, visiting the field and discussing topics, in more or less scientific meetings. Experts are also responsible for groups of pilot projects and publication can be part of the professional teamwork production of reports.

In fact, these last activities are “the institutional body” of ALCOMthat makes the whole ALCOM concept interesting. There will be generalised experience within the institution, rather independently of the persons who happen to be employed at the moment. There will be active interaction between persons with knowledge and interest in aquaculture and related topics. There will also be the collections of books, reports, photographs and other documents that are relevant only in an active intellectual environment. And it is on this experience that government officials and others can rely when making decisions to support integrated aquaculture solutions for smallholder farmers and others.

The evaluation mission team stresses that these activities, without direct support in the immediate objectives (but in accordance with the general development objectives), and not controlled by workplans, are the most important of ALCOM's tasks today. They also seem to have been performed in a satisfactory way. There is a question of principle, however, of great importance in this context. The fact that ALCOM has built up an institutional body of expertise and knowledge of great importance for future aquaculture activities in the SADC countries, means that the project is on its way to be transformed into a continuous running activity, i.e. an institution. This was definitely not the purpose of the project!