This is Dr C. Virginie Mfegue, plant pathologist in Cameroon.
I’ve been involved in research projects aiming to empower small scale farmers in terms of diseases and pests control. After setting and conducting the project in a more or less participatory approach, impact assessment is often left besides. When impact assessment is integrated to the project package, the time allocated to this step is somehow short cut. One reason is that research projects are overlapping, within the same regions, and the same groups of farmers, and we scientists are sometimes in a rush to implement new projects. I totally agree with Huu-Nhuan Nguyen (Message 5), mostly on overlapped impact of simultaneous research projects in the same areas.
In my opinion, farmers are willing to contribute to impact assessment for any research project, but their feeling is that scientists are sometimes using them for their personal interest. They are aware that after recording scientific data, scientists will come back to implement new projects, and so on. As a reaction to this situation, they often give biased answers to any impact questionnaire, because they do not see any interest for themselves.
A solution is to build and implement participatory projects based on the real needs of the target communities, and to avoid any donor/scientists oriented scheme. Thus, standardized/ideological impact assessment should be avoided, and replaced by long term evaluation of more subtle parameters than just economic or social ones, defined according to the type of project, the target community, etc....
Mfegue Crescence Virginie, PhD
Senior Plant pathologist
Institute of Agricultural Research for Development (IRAD),
Cameroon
Tél: +237 95 63 07 62 / +336 58 20 37 17
e-mail: mvirginie2002 (at) yahoo.fr
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