geographers and ‘logical’ development practice: the smallholder market access and food supply...

Applied Geography (1991)) 12,47-64

Geographers and ‘logical’ development practice: the Smallholder Market Access and Food Supply Programme in Papua New Guinea

Robert Crittenden

Department of Geography and Planning, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia

and David A. M. Lea

North Australia Research Unit (Australian National University), Darwin, Northern

Territory, Australia

Abstract

Logical framework analysis is an accepted and widely used part of the development practitioner’s (including human geographer’s) medley of techniques. It has recently been introduced to Papua New Guinea. Although a powerful tool for planning, appraisal and implementation of integrated rural development programmes and projects it has severe limitations, especially when applied to monitoring and evaluation. This is demonstrated in the Smallholder Market Access and Food Supply Programme of the Department of Agriculture and Livestock. The technique’s sophistication and apparent holism is beguiling, for it excludes participation of beneficiaries and their logics. Paradoxically its very strength-its appeal to a modernist logic-may also prevent it being used to bring about a meaningful development process.

You can look at all the log frames [logical frameworks] and techniques in the reports, but when you get on the ground, it’s all bullshit.

Australian aid officer quoted in Porter (1986: 253)

Over the last 20 years human geographers have contributed significantly to attempts in Papua New Guinea (PNG) to spur an internally meaningful and continuing social and economic development (Crittenden and Lea 1990a). During that time development fashions changed considerably and PNG became an independent nation. Nevertheless, a lasting feature of PNG’s development effort is its concern to identify, and to support, its less developed areas (Central Planning Office 1974). One of the ways of addressing a less-developed-areas programme was through large-scale integrated (and usually externally funded) rural development programmes (IRDPs). They attempted to instigate and coordinate social and economic programmes as packages of projects linked together in defined areas. As such, the holism of the concept, its emphasis upon regions and its emphasis on integration was especially appealing to geographers.

Parallels can therefore be drawn between IRDPs and the role of geography as a unifying science. The congruence with geography may be seen in that PNG’s six IRDPs were based on the notion that in rural areas ‘everything is related to everything else’ (Mosher 1966). Such a notion accorded well with the micro-study,

0143-6228/92/01/0047-18 0 1992 Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd

48 Geographers and ‘logical’ development practice in Papua New Guinea

village-based work of geographers (and anthopologists) in PNG of the ‘Brookfield’ school (Crittenden and Lea 1990a). At the same time geographers from elsewhere, particularly from America and Europe and working in Africa and Latin America, were examining the idea that development was a slow and natural process of diffusion (see Soja 1968 and Gould 1970, for example). This matched the dominant mode of thought of the development planners (such as Friedmann 1966) of the time, who espoused development as a process of diffusion. It was mostly with this latter idea that geographers initially made important contributions in the planning and implementation of the Less Developed Area Programme in PNG (Crittenden and Lea 1990a). The result was an emphasis on structures and the process of modernization or ‘westernization’.

Geographers in PNG questioned the efficacy of the IRDPs (and development practice) as instruments of change (see Crittenden and Lea 1989a, 1989b for a review). Drawing in large part on the information gathered from many micro-scale studies, they questioned the Eurocentric limitations of IRDPs, both as a concept and in their management, of bringing about ‘meaningful development’ within peoples’ ‘life worlds’. There developed a new emphasis on smaller, more narrowly focused projects attempting to involve beneficiaries.

Nevertheless, projects remain constrained in their potential effectiveness by the more recent introduction of over-sophisticated planning procedures. These seem to negate the growing sensitivity and understanding of peoples’ lifestyles. One of the techniques is logical framework analysis (LFA), recently introduced to PNG and used by the Department of Finance and Planning in preparing the Public Investment Plan, a part of the annual national budget, and by the Department of Agriculture and Livestock in planning the Smallholder Market Access and Food Supply Programme (SMAFSP).

LFA in project-based development aid was pioneered by USAID (1978) in the 1970s as part of a technological toolkit approach to development; a part of the western scientific tradition of the last 200 years. Firmly in the genre of social engineering, LFA is predicated upon an acceptance of the possibility of a ‘scientific’ domination of nature (and, thus, of pre-modern ways of life)-a domination that promised freedom from scarcity, want and the arbitrariness of natural calamity. Part of this western tradition was the supposition that the development of ‘rational’ forms of social organization and ‘rational’ modes of thought would provide liberation from myth, religion and superstition and release from the arbitrary use of power, as well as from the dark side of our own human natures (Harvey 1989: 12). Such ethnocentricism is as patently false as the notion that a process of ‘modernization’ may be equated with development (Soja 1989: 10, 42). It could, therefore, be argued that the LFA technique, like many of the bureaucratic planning procedures associated with the administration of aid. is inherently inappropriate as a rural development planning tool in third world countries (Crittenden and Lea 1990a, b).

The technique is nevertheless widely used in planning and designing, as well as to varying degrees in implementing, evaluating and monitoring projects by many UK, European, Canadian and Australian aid agencies, bilateral and multilateral banks and donors and government departments within developing countries (Cracknell 1988: 76). It is a central part of a burgeoning ‘management science’ within third world development. In PNG, as it seems in most third world countries, LFA was adopted at the behest of aid agencies rather than as a consequence of any critical evaluation by aid recipients. Its adoption was thus ill informed as well as hasty. Consequently, in PNG, and especially in the SMAFSP, the inherent inadequacies

Robert Crittenden and David A. M. Lea 49

or inappropriateness of LFA were compounded by misunderstandings of the technique itself.

This paper examines LFA from these three bases of criticism that are inevitably interwoven but nevertheless distinct: that LFA is inherently inadequate and inappropriate as a rural development tool in third world countries; that it was uncritically adopted in PNG; and that it was (and is) misused in the SMAFSP by the Department of Agriculture and Livestock. It also develops the idea that the structural failings of LFA (as a technique) cannot be divorced from the context of the cultural and political setting, contending that for LFA to be effective it must be conceptualized in more than the technical terms of the agricultural economist or management scientist.

Logical framework analysis

The logical framework described

Logical framework analysis is based upon clearly defining and establishing the links between the goals and purposes of a project and the inputs and outputs needed to achieve them. The technique embraces goal-orientated project and programme planning. Its inherent weakness is that once the links and assumptions are made in drawing up a programme plan, they need not subsequently be questioned. The iterative nature of planning, the continual modification of ideas and programmes, is replaced by an emphasis upon an adherence to a blueprinted sequence. Moreover, as a technological package imposed upon existing informal and formal structures by international aid agencies, it reinforces the philosophy of a top-down transfer of technology (Chambers and Ghildyal 1985). Participation between developers and developees in defining the links and assumptions is more often than not ignored. Beneficiaries of development programmes are thus kept at arm’s length by specialist managers and bureaucrats, not only in making plans but in implementing them.

Paradoxically it is within the technique’s weakness that its apparent strength lies: it establishes a logical hierarchy of inputs, outputs, objectives and targets that is quantifiable and can be matched to a budget and a time-frame. Doing this ‘requires project designers to deal systematically with such important management issues as priority setting, programming, budgeting and control’ (Rondinelli 1983: 71).

The central tenets of LFA are that:

1. if adequate inputs are provided, then planned outputs will be produced; 2. if these outputs are produced, then purposes will be achieved; 3. if purpose is achieved, then a planned degree of progress towards a higher goal

will occur (Carruthers and Clayton 1977: 310).

The logical frames constructed upon those tenets can, and do, vary depending on the complexity of the project. In its original form the log frame divides a vertical from a horizontal logic within the project implementation design and schedule (see Fig. 1). The vertical logic designates the causal relationships between each level of a narrative summary based upon the hierarchical logic of development projects-inputs, outputs, purposes and goals-and the important assumptions affecting these linkages (OECD 1986). This clarifies the structure and components of a project and makes the key elements, as conceived by project planners (who should include the prospective beneficiaries), explicit. The horizontal logic quantifies the resources and expected results of a project for each of the four levels


IMPORTANT ASSUMPTIONS NARRATIVE SUMMARY

OBJECTIVELY VERWIABLE MEANS OF VERlFlCATlON

INDICATORS (OVI) (MOV)

Figure 1. The logical framework. Source: After USAID (1978)

of the vertical logic. Objectively verifiable indicators, which are meant to indicate criteria for gauging the performance of the project, are identified. They must focus on important objectives; they must be plausible; they must be sufficient in number; they must be independent of each other; and they must be objectively verifiable. Finally, in the horizontal logic, the ‘means of verification’ are detailed, to ensure that indicators may be measured effectively.

Effective use of LFA presupposes an acceptance of, and a clear understanding of, the project cycle and its link to project logic. Logical frameworks, implementation schedules and budgets clearly are closely related planning and management tools. When a project is designed and appraised (using cost-benefit analysis and related techniques), components and activities must be defined within a time-frame and budget, in order for future management to be effective. LFA facilitates this. Project components can be delineated within a log framework and the corresponding activities within each component identified. LFA also allows the inputs for each activity to be itemized as in the usual budgetary procedures-or, if part of recurrent expenditure, through a process of zero-based budgeting. From LFA a project implementation schedule can be drawn up to guide project management. The schedule allows project and component managers to delegate tasks to subordinates. Such delegation stimulates effective management through what is termed the financial management initiative (FMI).

With clearly defined tasks component managers are more likely to work effectively. If the initiative for implementing project components is complemented by financial responsibility, there is a greater chance of success. As part of the process of encouraging financial management initiative, LFA can also be a powerful method of linking project implementation with a system of financial or


expenditure monitoring and evaluation. It allows funds to be used effectively. Tasks may be brought forward, postponed or cancelled and funds may be switched between components and items of the input schedule, at quarterly reviews, as the progress of each component’s expenditure and commitment is monitored. It is an extremely versatile audit and inspection tool.

Despite the management advantages, however, the inherent weaknesses cannot be ignored and are of paramount significance to the success of the technique in promoting meaningful rural development. LFA appears too rigorous and, ironically, too logical for it to be flexible enough for evaluation and implementation to be truly processual, proactive and effective, especially in the recasting of programme and project objectives and the redefining of assumptions in the project logic. Because of its strengths in project design (irrespective of the degree of beneficiary participation) it may be used simply as a ‘blueprinted’ bookkeeping process; and then, in most cases, not very well either! This is what happens in the PNG Departments of Finance and Planning and Agriculture and Livestock.

In overemphasizing financial criteria, and concentrating upon quantifiable indicators, LFA neglects the social and physical task environment, effects and impacts, the real success or otherwise of project activities. In similar vein to the ‘development diffusionist geographers’ of the 1960s and 1970s with their concentration upon modernization surfaces, the use of LFA precludes consideration of ‘other’ ways of doing things, of ‘other’ objectives and of the value of ‘other’ ways of life. It is here that the work of those using the micro-geographic method, attempting to obtain a view from within, has a role (see Crittenden and Lea 1990a for a discussion of this). In this context the inability to recognize the ‘other’ also entails a refusal to recognize that different values and belief systems exist and thus emphasizes that knowledge and belief are inexorably linked with power relationships (Harvey 1989: 260-83).

Justification for the neglect of the social parameters (including concern with the ‘other’) is made by emphasizing that evaluation (as distinct from monitoring) taking place over a longer time period is concerned with such effects and impacts (see, for example, Lai 1987). It is far too easy, however, to overemphasize inputs and outputs, especially in the context of an annual cycle of budget forecasts and quarterly reviews. Although effective monitoring and evaluation (M & E) requires clearly stated planned objectives and critical indicators, it is, nevertheless, a travesty when it is reduced to nothing more than identifying where cuts may be made to meet revised budget ceilings. In such a situation the aim of a proactive planning and management system in achieving desired goals is undermined (see Maddock 1990: 250-l).

Thus while LFA is an attractive analytical tool for project identification and planning, its use during implementation shows that tools and techniques, however well applied, cannot avoid hidden agendas. They can create illusions of development (for simply spending money to budget is certainly not development), they are not politically or ideologically neutral, and they can negate indigenous development processes (Crittenden and Lea 1989b). It is far too optimistic to say that monitoring and evaluating development assistance has ‘come of age’ through the use of a technique such as LFA (see for example Cracknell 1988).

Logical framework analysis in PNG

Logical framework analysis was introduced to PNG at the same time as the Department of Finance and Planning, in 1985-86, adopted a ‘project’ base to the


annual recurrent budget and redesigned the medium-term (4-5 years) development planning framework (Crittenden and Lea 1989a: 1-16, 108-11). The packaging of both the recurrent budget and new expenditure into projects was expected to take place over a four-year period. The decision reflected the popularity of development programming and development projects with aid agencies, demonstrating not only confidence in the established planning procedures of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and LFA, but also in the use of projects to package development aid in otherwise ‘inefficient’ bureaucracies (Rondinelli 1983: 308; Uphoff 1990: 1401). The impetus for ‘packaging’ the PNG budget stemmed largely from the World Bank (1983) and the Australian International Development Assistance Bureau (Government of Australia 1985; AIDAB 1989: 17-24). A newly established cell in the Department of Finance and Planning, the Resource Management Unit, was given the task of developing the capacity to carry out the process within the PNG public service, in both national line departments and the provinces.

The overall result of introducing LFA (and CBA) into PNG’s budgetary system has been to emphasize the technique’s weaknesses. It is both misunderstood and misused, and the inherent flaws not recognized (Coverdale and Healy 1987; Crittenden and Lea 1988; Crittenden et al. 1990, 1991). Paradoxically, these weaknesses are the more apparent precisely because its strengths have been well developed.

The Public Investment Programme is documented clearly using LFA. Within it the recurrent budgets of line departments are composed of a number of discrete, designed projects, each with its logical framework. It is this strength of LFA as a planning and design tool that has had the most effective and useful impact in PNG (Department of Finance and Planning 1989: iii-xxvi). The use of logical frames in the implementation of interventions and in the monitoring and evaluation process, however, is extremely rudimentary-again emphasizing the technique’s weaknesses. Such a contrast reflects the concern of aid donors like AIDAB, and national departments, such as Finance and Planning, with the budgetary process of project administration rather than with the rather more inexact, but important, task of monitoring and evaluating project impact and the achievement of project goals. It also tends to suggest that the importance of the dynamic and feedback loops between all parts of the planning process is not recognized, or is at least ignored.

The strength of LFA is emphasized in that in PNG reliance was always placed by the Department of Finance and Planning on strictly defined budget procedures to manage, and thus by default to monitor, the implementation of projects within the national budget (Crittenden and Lea 1989a: 17-18, 22-23). It was assumed that careful project selection and tight control of funds, now improved by the adoption of LFA techniques, would automatically ensure ‘success’. Such arm’s_length administration melds neatly with the bureaucratic expediency of most aid donors (Department of Finance and Planning 1989: xi-xiv).

Consequently, expenditure control is not linked with any effective method of monitoring and evaluating either performance, implementation, the task environment, or the real impacts of projects and programmes upon people’s lives, but simply with the budget sheet (Crittenden ef al. 1988). The Department of Finance and Planning introduced two new forms, based upon a generic logical framework for project design (used by most aid donors), to facilitate quarterly project reviews-a Project Implementation Review Schedule (PIRS) and a Project Implementation Schedule (PIS)- as its contribution to monitoring and evaluation! These are discussed later.

Consequently, far from integrating planning, implementation, monitoring and


evaluation, or establishing a dialogue between the ‘planned-for’ and the ‘planners’, the use of LFA is forcing them apart. Experience of LFA in PNG (Crittenden et al. 1990, 1991) leads to the conclusion that many of the objections raised about cost-benefit analysis as used for appraisal and post-project evaluation (see, for example, Self 1975; Harris 1990), apply equally to LFA. What seems to be happening is that LFA, like cost-benefit analysis techniques, is becoming a way of validating what aid experts and bureaucrats want to do (Carruthers 1984: 59), not what people want or desire for their lives. Moreover, LFA has degenerated to no more than a sophisticated way of packaging aid into projects and ensuring that large sums of money are spent to budget and deadlines. Once spent, the project or programme is said to be complete. If the books balance then the project is regarded as a success!

The rest of this paper uses an example, the Smallholder Market Access and Food Supply Programme (SMAFSP) of the Department of Agriculture and Livestock, and the results of mid-term evaluations of that programme to highlight what are considered by human geographers as some of the inherent weaknesses of project aid and LFA in PNG.

The use of logical framework analysis in the Smallholder Market Access and Food Supply Programme

The concept of the Smallholder Market Access and Food Supply Programme

Planning for the Smallholder Market Access and Food Supply Programme (SMAFSP) started in 1986-87. Phase One of the programme was submitted to the Department of Finance and Planning by the Department of Primary Industry, now the Department of Agriculture and Livestock (DAL), in 1988. It was part of DAL’s attempt to comply with the Department of Finance and Planning’s plans to formulate all public expenditure as investment programmes and projects. It was therefore one of the earliest programmes to be developed using LFA. It also incorporated lessons learnt by the Department of Finance and Planning from designing and implementing a number of large-scale integrated rural development projects (US$ 12-30 x 10 each, over five years) in the provinces of PNG (see Crittenden and Lea 1989a).

Consequently, the SMAFSP was radical in its design. It marked the watershed between earlier development programmes based upon the diffusion models of development geographers, and the results of those using micro-geographic methods. The former programmes were essentially providing infrastructure (for example, in the Southern Highlands Rural Development Project over 40 per cent of expenditure was on 178 km of new road). The more recent and smaller efforts (US$ 5 X lo6 each, over 5 years) were designed to raise rural productivity by investing ‘on-farm’ in village gardens in improved farming technology and off-farm by stimulating market opportunities.

The 1982-83 National Nutritional Survey (NNS 1985) and a study of the distribution of services and the socioeconomic status of districts in PNG (de Alburqueque and d’Sa 1986) were used to identify the least-developed administrative districts where people were nutritionally disadvantaged. Phase One of the SMAFSP was prepared for the Wosera District in the East Sepik Province and the Jimi District in the Western Highlands Province. Phase Two of the SMAFSP, prepared in 1988, was for the Kaintiba District of the Gulf Province and the Goilala District of the Central Province. Phase Three was prepared in 1989 for


the Okapa District of the Eastern Highlands Province and the Upper Ramu District of Madang Province (see Fig. 2). The first phase of the SMAFSP was evaluated (mid-term) in late 1989 (Crittenden et al. 1990) and the second phase in late 1990 (Crittenden et al. 1991).

The overall programme concept was one of intervention through a number of related agricultural and nutrition components. The goal of the programme was to ‘ . . . achieve a broad improvement in the productivity of subsistence and semi-subsistence related activities and to increase cash income opportunities . . . in as far as this is the best available means of improving rural welfare . . .’ (Department of Agriculture and Livestock 1987: 9). The main strategy was to coordinate and strengthen extension services to village smallholders in the less-developed areas of PNG, and thus to intervene in farmers’ gardens. Planned provisions to achieve this were better road access, appropriate marketing mechanisms, effective farming systems research and development, more effective extension training and the improvement of existing infrastructure.

The design of the SMAFSP was also a positive attempt by DAL to come to terms with a maturing, but nevertheless inefficient, decentralized system of government based on 19 provincial administrations. Previous integrated programmes were all administered by the Department of Finance and Planning on behalf of provincial governments. However, with the institution of provincial governments in 1978 agricultural extension became the responsibility of the provinces-the Division of Primary Industry (DPI) in each province. The national department (DAL) took the role of national agricultural policy adviser and supplier of specialized support- research, training and analytical services. The SMAFSP concept, therefore, recognized the need to build upon the planning and implementation capacity within the provinces (Axline 1986) as well as to devolve some responsibility from the DAL to DPI and to improve the overall extension service.

An important part of the SMAFSP strategy was to avoid establishing a management enclave within any provincial public service and to incorporate the programme within existing provincial administrative structures and programmes. Technical, extension and administrative training at all levels was planned to sharpen the ability of DPI as well as the Divisions of Health and Education to support their field officers. Community schools, health centres, aid posts and rural extension centres (see Crittenden and Lea 1990b) were to be the channels used to reach the farmers and their families. Renovated houses and offices, reconstructed roads and improved communication facilities were planned to support the officer in the field. At the same time, the SMAFSP recognized the integrity of the farming systems of PNG and the inseparable nature of the subsistence and cash cropping systems in the household/smallholder economy. Unfortunately the programme has fallen far short of its objectives.

Logical framework analysis and problems in implementing the Smallholder Market Access and Food Supply Programme

The SMAFSP demonstrates the difficulty of translating theory into practice. The task environment, especially the bureaucracy, was recognized by the SMAFSP designers as a largely imponderable factor which had to be addressed. They underestimated, however, the substantial capacity of bureaucracies to resist change (see Hulme 1983, for example). Moreover, they largely ignored the cultural and social environment of the individual programme phase areas. In addition, and despite the laudable overall goal set for the programme, the use of LFA did not


produce objectives that were explicit, realistic enough or linked through a reasoned set of assumptions with manageable and proven intervention programmes.

In Phases One and Two of the programme the goals include ‘. . . an increase in household income by 100% from cash crops, a 20% improvement in the weight-for-age of children under five years of age, and a reduction in still-birth and infant mortality rates to below lOO/lOOO live births’. In the context of the rural economy of PNG and our knowledge of it, of the bureaucracy, and of the time-frame (five years) of the programme, achievement of such objectives was impossible (see Crittenden et al. 1991 for details). There simply was not sufficient known about the problems to design interventions to address the objectives.

The mid-term evaluations of Phase One and Phase Two of the programme suggested that its poor performance to date, however, was not simply one of either poor project design, inadequate component definition, inadequate programme management due to poor understanding and application of LFA techniques, or its inappropriateness. Rather, weaknesses in SMAFSP that could be isolated were related to all the elements of the project cycle and its relationship to LFA. The principal flaws in the SMAFSP were summarized as unrealistic assumptions and programme goals enshrined within the programme’s logical framework, and an almost total lack of beneficiary participation, as well as of implementation impact monitoring and evaluation. Once the project began there was neither adequate monitoring and evaluation of the task environment (both management and socio-cultural) nor of performance in the field. Capacity-building within the provincial administration, although a reasonable enough objective, was confused with ‘beneficiary participation’. In fact neither was taking place. The programme was almost totally divorced from the provincial administration and from the supposed target group.

Unrealistic assumptions. The key to successfully using the LFA technique is to specify the ‘important assumptions’ in project design (see Fig. 1). These assumptions encapsulate the predicted outcomes or benefits. In the SMAFSP the ‘intervention hypotheses’ underlying the programme’s design (the assumptions justifying the SMAFSP, that particular programme activities would alleviate or overcome constraints to market and food supply development, and thus improve rural welfare), and the ‘action hypothesis’ that the participants would interact with inputs, animals or inanimate objects, such as land or water, in specific ways were not stated. Practicable field programmes were not detailed. Other assumptions were so sweeping that they were not even mentioned: for example, that there would be effective cooperation between national and provincial governments; that there would be political support at all levels; that trained personnel would be available on schedule; that there would be no natural disasters such as floods, droughts or frosts; and that law and order would be maintained. It was not realized that use of the log frame technology could not substitute for lack of understanding or consideration of the socio-cultural environment; that it was not a technological panacea.

The misunderstanding is partly a result of the nature of LFA-a misleadingly simple, neat and abstract set of related techniques. It is also a result of misunderstandings of its use. Continual reconsideration of assumptions and the likelihood of achieving particular goals through particular activities is an important aspect of project implementation and monitoring-a task supposedly highlighted by LFA. The use of LFA should prepare managers for the unexpected, but it rarely does. Use of LFA seems to encourage a high degree of optimism, for rarely are


possible negative outcomes listed! All assumptions in the log framework should be made explicit, for in the final analysis the LFA is only as good as the assumptions and activities upon which it is based. In the SMAFSP, once the assumptions were made-and without a great deal of thought it seems-they were forgotten. This may be a result of poor application of LFA but it is also a central element of the technique’s beguiling nature.

Even if the assumptions are well defined it is imperative that they are continually reviewed, to monitor and evaluate how and whether the project is achieving its intended goals and to continually reassess the programme’s goals (Rondinelli 1983: 65). The log frame appears not to allow this. Not only may there by a problem in choice of goals but it may be necessary to actually change goals over time. As Chambers has noted:

The ability to recognize, embrace and learn from error and failure, and even to change objectives, [is] a key to success. Conversely, many of the persistent failures in development owe their lack of success to adherence to blueprints and a dogged commitment to non-learning. (Chambers 1988: 9)

Within the SMAFSP the hypothetical links and responses formulated within the project logic became sacrosanct and the assumptions upon which they were based unquestioned. The uncertainty inherent in the links between outputs and effects and impacts was ignored. The SMAFSP became ‘blueprinted’ and locked into a bureaucratic interpretation of project logic that viewed each stage as strictly sequential (see also Lai 1987 for a similarly narrow-minded interpretation). With LFA used merely as an alternative description of a project budget it became part of a self-serving management exercise. Filling-in of forms (and often incorrectly and disingenuously) was essentially to satisfy a bureaucratic procedure. The SMAFSP became locked into a bureaucratic rationality from which LFA techniques offered no ‘escape’.

Programme management grew, apparently, inflexible, despite unexpected outcomes. For example, the failure of the smallholder livestock enterprises in the Wosera based on sheep, goats, chicken and guinea pigs (in a society that values pigs) did not prompt any modification of objectives (and a new budget) or a clearer identification of specific programme activities. The same was true in the Kaintiba and Goilala, with disputes over disbursements for road work. Large sums of money were spent on government housing, air charters, and travel by public servants and little on village-based projects. This led to riotous demonstrations by village people. The LFA, with its emphasis upon quantifiable indicators, did not allow for subjective assessments to be made of project components, using rapid rural appraisal techniques. There was no provision, for example, for villagers’ opinions to be sought and the project’s effects and impacts to be assessed, or for the important assumptions to be questioned and tested.

As a result of project management’s intransigent adherence to a project blueprint, the morale of many of the extension officers trying to implement the programme in the field was low. Unrealistic and unrequited expectations were engendered among the supposed beneficiaries of the programme. These two conditions created an extremely hostile task environment which led to a general frustration with the programme’s apparent lack of achievement among those who planned the programme and who were managing it within DAL.

Beneficiary par&#ation. Central to LFA’s shortcomings, especially in its application to the SMAFSP, is its apparent inability to come to terms with any sort


of ‘peasant logic’ or to involve beneficiaries in the development of their own world. Rather than being flexible and adaptable, the greatest shortcoming of LFA is that it is so sophisticated and so logical that mere project implementers dare not fiddle with it! Especially if their fiddling is based upon the subjective observations of rapid rural appraisal/evaluations, the opinions of villagers and extension officers. There is a huge gulf between deskbound bureaucrats and muddy-booted implementers facing real problems. It could be argued that LFA cannot bridge that gulf unless the bureaucrats are highly experienced and extremely sensitive to rural conditions and lifestyles (see Crittenden and Lea 1990b).

When predicted outcomes do not occur, as is often the case, it is easy to blame either the project planners, project management, or the recipients, and to retreat simply to auditing commitments and expenditure rather than asking questions about the linkages in the logical frame itself and the assumptions that were made in constructing it. The initial ‘criteria of success’ and their measurement determined at the planning and appraisal stage of a programme are also nothing more than the ethnocentric valuations of deskbound bureaucrats and experts.

It is argued that development can only take place when the people undergoing the development process believe that they themselves are benefiting from it (Goulet 1971; Richards 1985). There is a burgeoning literature on the ideas of indigenous development (see, for example, Chambers 1983), on the need for a ‘bottom-up’ approach and a people’s science. The ideas of participatory development, the human factor in planning, research and extension, and the need to educate and mobilize rural human resources are issues related to development programmes that have been discussed for decades (see, for example, Cohen 1961). Recipients are ultimately the only people who can say whether a project is successful or not in terms of their changing needs and aspirations. LFA takes little or no account of such opinions; nor, indeed does it suggest ways of doing so. By concentrating on the abstract and objective it precludes them. There is certainly no provision for eliciting them in the formal monitoring procedures of the SMAFSP or any other programmes/projects in DAL or the Department of Finance and Planning.

The planners of the SMAFSP did, in fact, try to adopt a ‘bottom-up’ approach when designing the programme. Rapid rural appraisals were carried out in all the chosen programme districts. However, these were more in the form of reconnaissances, and the teams were so large (in some cases more than a dozen experts) that any substantial interaction with villagers was impossible. The essential follow-up visits and discussions with the expected beneficiaries in order to develop the programme concept did not take place. The plans were eventually drawn up in isolation by bureaucrats. Again it was a problem of translating theory into practice. With no methodology available to help planners bridge the gap between them and the planned for, participation was interpreted as ‘capacity-building’, ‘strengthening existing institutions’ and sustainability. It was a question of administrative design. The designers of the SMAFSP, if they were to use LFA, were not given the tools to enable them to formally ‘recognise the existence of a peasant logic that very often differs from the logic of traditional planners . . .’ (FAO 1983, quoted in Gianotten 1986: 1).

Consequently, the SMAFSP demonstrates that short-term applications of external aid may be worse than useless if they fail to stimulate or foster ‘internal’ growth and development. Each culture has different criteria for efficiency, effectiveness and the ‘good life’ and the LFA is firmly rooted in a western logic and ethic. Recognition of this is absolutely necessary, not only if there is going to be any


true ‘peasant’ participation in the planning and implementation process and in programme monitoring, but also if the LFA techniques are to be modified to accommodate it; and modified they must be.

Most importantly, the abstract nature LFA must be changed to accommodate subjective data, views and opinions. Local people themselves are frequently capable of making assessments on the value of a project without needing indicators or a complex methodology. Indeed in PNG it has been stated that ‘logic is a white man’s trick’ (Connell 1991). The real, long-term benefits of a project may not even be reflected by measuring the outputs or effects of the project-the objectively verifiable indicators. For example, in the Jimi District the SMAFSP attempts to encourage the development of smallholder plantations of betel-nut failed, and yet entrepreneurs in a neighbouring district subsequently invested heavily and successfully in such enterprises. Benefits must reflect how the project relates to the development process of the beneficiary group and this can only be done by making continuing and qualitative evaluations which look at people’s participation and how they perceive that they are benefiting, or being disadvantaged, by the project.

Monitoring and evaluation. In the context of little or no participation of the beneficiaries in the planning of the SMAFSP, the monitoring process, based upon a poorly constructed logical framework, is a ‘thing in itself’. It does not and cannot provide the information project management requires to be proactive. Even the information needed for financial control (seemingly the forte of any well- constructed LFA) is inadequate. Procedures are not followed correctly or are avoided, and the documentation required to control and justify SMAFSP expenditure is not kept. Expenditure is ad hoc and at gross variance with component budgets. The programme managers in the provinces and in DAL dutifully tick the boxes and fill in the quarterly evaluation forms (the PIRS and PIS) for such procedures are easy, neat and give the impression that something worthwhile is being achieved!

The problem, in part, lies in programme management’s misunderstanding of the role of the log frame in monitoring and evaluation, but also in the Department of Finance and Planning’s concern with quarterly financial reviews-that money is being spent. The logical framework forms (PIRS and PIS) are so abstract that it is impossible to determine from them whether the system is working honestly. Moreover, LFA in the SMAFSP does not provide information that management can use to improve programme performance in the field. There is little, if any, feedback from the Department of Finance and Planning or from headquarters management to field officers in response to the quarterly forms. More importantly, the logical framework system does not look for errors or failures but more for progress and successes. While in theory it can consider external factors affecting the project, such as changing commodity prices, the ‘nets’ of elites (see Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee 1986 and Chambers 1983: 131), or unexpected environmental impacts, it usually ignores them for they are complex and unpredictable.

To a large degree the failings of the LFA in SMAFSP are because, as with most techniques of the development professionals, there is an obsession with data being reliable, available, measurable, accurate and replicable whenever possible. Such standards are often inappropriate to most rural people’s lifeworlds. In the SMAFSP the use of objectively verifiable indicators and their means of verification has been taken to ludicrous extremes. They are meaningless and improbable lists of plant cuttings, seeds and seedlings distributed, livestock distributed, extension patrols


conducted and money spent. What do ten thousand pineapple suckers, two extension patrols, or ten million betel nuts represent in terms of people’s lives being improved? The obsession with such ‘facts’ within a log frame is justified because they are said to be objective, dispassionate, independent of values and interests and necessary in ‘professional’ decision-making. It nevertheless begs the question for whom are development projects meant-the managers or the recipients/ beneficiaries/participants?

Most organizations using a logical framework would say that weight should be given to qualitative as well as quantitative factors, particularly in social projects (see Cracknell and Rednall 1986: s.3.13). They would argue that there is no reason why the LFA should not be a fully interactive feedback system enabling people to be involved in their own development process and in the assessment of their own collective ‘progress’. The reality is that bureaucrats rarely consider qualitative factors for they are imprecise, difficult to collect, difficult to plug into computerized systems, inimitable to the construction of tables, graphs and log frames, and do not lend themselves to being reduced to a single number. Yet the lie is compounded, for much of the so-called objective data available to planners are of spurious accuracy. Within the SMAFSP they are at best only indicative because:

1. they are very unreliable because of the difficulties of finding and collecting them (see also Hill 1986);

2. there are no proper socioeconomic baseline studies of any of the SMAFSP districts. The data available were collected by poorly designed rapid rural appraisals that can only be indicative. Even well-designed questionnaires with well-designed sampling frames are unlikely to give reasonable monitoring and evaluation information (see also Farmer 1980);

3. the choice of indices are value laden. As Mabugane (1971) explains, an index of donor progress may in fact be an index of recipient degradation;

4. the real effects or impacts (negative and positive) of the SMAFSP will only be known in the long term. In the short term, people’s satisfaction and involvement and expectations are the real indicators of success or failure.

More importantly, ‘development’ is multifaceted. It is about improving living conditions, income, workloads and gender relationships, community participation, allowing better and more equitable access to land, overcoming corruption, developing local institutions and improving cooperation. These factors are difficult (although not impossible) to measure. Nevertheless, they are important and they cannot be ignored. Finally, nobody (except possibly the people undergoing change) will really know who are winners and losers or whether change is the direct result of measurable project inputs or not. They must be asked for their opinions, and their opinions must be valued and incorporated into LFA.

Often direct, well-established, easily identifiable, subjective indicators may be available. For example, in the Jimi valley programme area interviews with community schoolteachers, aid-post orderlies, nursing sisters, pastors, village court magistrates, local government councillors as well as ordinary men and women in the villages belied the detail given in the quarterly monitoring review forms. Although the forms reported so many seeds, suckers and cuttings distributed, the common reaction in the village was that ‘the &&man [agricultural extension officer] only came once’. Although planting material was distributed there was no extension programme in place. In many cases the evaluation team (Crittenden et al. 1990) was shown heaps of rotting material-banana and pineapple suckers-that villagers said were left by extension officers with no explanation what it was all for!


Moreover, villagers said they did not want any pineapples or bananas anyway, they had good enough varieties of their own! In the Wosera, although the PIRS forms reported so many village chicken projects complete and operating, not one had any birds when visited. The enclosures and houses were built, but the birds had either died or had been killed and eaten.

It is difficult to decide whether LFA is being abused or is simply inadequate in such a situation to cope with ‘real’ development. The LFA, with its obsession with objective data, can only provide a limited view of a project and a people. A walk through the villages and discussions with target groups are more likely to show errors about assumptions, effects and long-term impacts. The LFA must provide a structure within which such ‘informal’ techniques are recognized as valuable. In the Wosera people did not want chicken projects or guinea pig projects; they were too labour intensive and dependent upon imported feed. Talking with people is a cheaper, easier and less conventional but more effective way of monitoring a project than slavishly filling in forms derived from LFA. Thus although the objective of a monitoring system is to give early warning of when things are going wrong (for example, the inappropriateness of the small livestock programme) or when real development is not taking place (due to increasing inequalities, increased vulnerability, and dependency on, or inadequacy of, the delivery system), monitoring systems based strictly on logical frameworks rarely do. Walking through villages, observing what is going on, and talking with village people will.

Conclusion

We are not simply ‘development luddites’. However, it does appear that development professionals are emulating many geographers of the 1960s and 1970s who lurched from one technological ‘fix’ to another in the exciting but rather inhumane period of the so-called quantitative revolution. Geography is the richer for these changes because they were later combined with fieldwork, participant observation and the involvement of lay people and beneficiaries to produce a more holistic and humanistic approach. The users of LFA must take a similar course.

Cost-benefit analysis and LFA, at present, fail to take uncertainty, the human element, into account; they are ethnocentric in concept and in identifying the data that need to be collected; they encourage manipulation and massaging of data to fit false assumptions masquerading as technical sophistication; and the rigid linear causal sequence assumed is, in any project involving people, an unlikely simplification. The use of LFA in PNG is so abstract as to hide reality rather than represent it.

Whilst in theory there may be a continuous change in the design of frameworks as experience grows, and there may be an incorporation of subjective methodologies, this is extremely difficult in practice. There are two reasons for this. First, the majority of projects have three to five-year time-frames. Secondly, aid agencies are very insistent upon the adoption of LFA and related techniques such as the ‘standard international functional classification of government operations’, as suggested by the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund, for programme budgeting.

Nevertheless, LFA techniques must be modified to overcome their inherent inadequacies in the context of third world development. Such modification will only come about with critical analysis of the use/misuse of LFA, and a greater understanding of its strengths and weaknesses. As it is presently used the LFA is essentially a time-wasting straightjacket of inappropriate indicators on a project.


Ultimately, in practice, it is highly probable that the logical framework of individual projects will be ignored by the better project administrators. In essence its practicality exists only in the design stages, appraisal, and the early period of project implementation. As an effective long-term monitoring and evaluation device of true project performance, it is much too rigid.

The LFA is thus simply another example of a technological package that benefits the planners more than the planned for. It reflects the neo-classical economics of the 1950s and 1960s and relegates people to the category of target groups, excluding their way of making decisions and organizing, or adapting to change. The power to do anything remains firmly embedded within a formal, complicated and exclusive planning or research system controlled by a bureaucracy of professional administrators and scientists.

The inherent inadequacy of LFA as a rural development tool in third world countries does not mean, however, that LFA is without merit. If its shortcomings are recognized it brings coherence and discipline to project formulation and design and the simple matrix encapsulates neatly in a few pages the logic behind a project. This is very useful in bureaucracies where officials often do not understand the context in which a project is identified and planned or even the geography of the project area. Further, it provides documentation for bureaucracies and donors and this is obviously essential where public money or aid is concerned. However, in good, adaptively designed projects, as the SMAFSP potentially is, the LFA should be phased into the background and overlain by qualitative assessments as the project proceeds. In the time-frames available, these call for humane, flexible and enlightened management skills, rather than quantifying the unquantifiable and filling in forms.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank officers in the Department of Agriculture and Livestock, PNG, especially John Mandich, Graeme Tupper, Tonny Hobiagi, Bonga Karisa, Terry Walo and William Gwaiseuk for their help in supplying information on the SMAFSP.

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(Revised manuscript received 31 August 1991)

geographers and ‘logical’ development practice: the smallholder market access and food supply...

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