ARCO research published on the Magazine of the Italian Agency for Cooperation and Development

In its last issue published in March 2017, the Magazine of the Italian Agency for Cooperation and Development “La Cooperazione Italiana Informa” included an article on the paper published by our scientific director Prof. Mario Biggeri with our researcher Federico Ciani and Andrea Ferrannini on The European Journal of Development Research.:
“Aid Effectiveness and Multilevel Governance: The Case of a Value Chain Development Project in Rural Ethiopia”.

This is just another example of the quality and relevance of our research activities with the main actors of international development cooperation!

Link:
http://www.agenziacooperazione.gov.it/wp-content/magazine/03_mar17/Cooperazione_Informa_Marzo17.pdf

Please read below the extended abstract of the paper:

Modern societies are increasingly characterised by complex multilevel governance mechanisms. Nonetheless, evaluations of how development initiatives are implemented with respect to the international aid effectiveness agenda have embraced this multilevel complexity only to a limited extent.
The main goal of this study is to evaluate the degree of compliance of the “Agricultural Value Chains Project in Oromia (AVCPO)” with respect to the Paris Declaration and Accra Agenda for Aid Effectiveness. The project is funded by the Italian bilateral cooperation and is aimed at increasing the well-being of local small farmers in the Bale Mountains Region by establishing and strengthening their role within the agricultural value chain of durum wheat. This project was selected on the basis of its innovative approach on multilevel governance enhancement for value chain development, together with the priority assigned to Ethiopia by the Italian development cooperation in its 2010–2012 and 2013–2015 strategies.
Embracing an agriculture-led industrialisation approach, the key challenge AVCPO has addressed is the opportunity to rely on – and upgrade – poor farmers and smallholders to produce high-quality food commodities on a large scale, in order to meet the quantity and quality demand of agro-industries within ‘‘buyer-driven’’ value chains.
The evaluation adopted a tailored and innovative methodology able to flexibly embrace the multilevel complexity of the Value Chain Development strategy adopted by the project, assessing its coherence with the Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness by involving stakeholders at different levels.
All in all, AVCPO is recognised to have boosted a process of self-expansion of the value chain, by enhancing pro-poor market and multilevel governance mechanisms, moving from a top-down agricultural extension approach to local empowerment of farmers, cooperatives and institutions. The substantial shift in focus to transformative quality oriented value chain processes, rather than simply production results, emerges as the most relevant element of novelty of this project, leading to virtuous trajectories of high road to development and making the value chain more inclusive and sustainable.