Mid-Term Review of the AGIR Programme - Sida

2 F I N D I N G S
affect results at the local level. Field visits by the review team note that the approach
to replicate the capacity strengthening of organisations at the local level, using national-based
organisations, is not as efficient as first thought and, at least in some cases,
needs complimentary measures or a different focus to be effective.
Some partner organisations, contacted at the local level, noted insufficient funding to
operate effectively at the local level, in stark contrast with the optimism expressed at
the central level for AGIR support. This is the case of the Youth Parliament branch in
Nampula, whose representative was not even aware that the organisation was receiving
funding from AGIR. Local partners of the natural resource platform in Tete also
received a very small proportion of the funds available in connection with the extractive
industry advocacy initiative through the national platform, and express that they
could have performed more and better work if more funds had been available. Lately,
due to resource constraints, some of the outreach of these local level organisations has
ended at the provincial capital. For example, the Children Network representative in
Nampula noted that the received resources were not enough to implement the main
activities to manage the network, let alone to implement activities at the district level.
Another implication of a strong focus on central partners is that certain important
issues may not be addressed. For example, district decentralisation, which is linked to
outcomes in the sub-programme managed by Oxfam, is not represented in the form of
a national platform, network or similar structure. This has, to some extent, negatively
affected outcomes in this field, whereas at the local level there are strong organisations
and networks with the capacity to generate change and impact that address decentralised
district planning.
Some organisations at the local level also mentioned that the centralisation of training
is limiting the participation of staff from the local level, since some of the training
activities carried out at the central level only include representatives of some provinces.
Generally, in the two provinces visited, Nampula and Tete, most of the interviewed
local organisations had only participated in training provided at the central
level and with other organisations. There were actually some training activities at the
local level, but the model of replication and decentralisation has worked well with
some and not with others, hence creating a risk of ineffectiveness.
For example, Diakonia provided training in Beira and IBIS and SCC have held decentralised
partner forums in Tete with all their respective partners. These forums have
included some capacity development content: e.g. on results-based monitoring and
experience exchange. In some cases ‘training of trainers’ was adopted to allow for the
replication of the training, but only in some areas and to some organisations. For example,
ORAM received training on RBM that allowed it to replicate this in its organisation.
This triggered interest from other colleagues and branches. ORAM requested
more training to AGIR, which was provided to all delegations/branches. In a different
process, the organisation was trained in gender but was not able to replicate this to
other branches; although there was a high demand for this training in the provincial
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