African Agriculture Planning Scorecard

1. African Agriculture Planning Scorecard

2. The challenge • Wide variations in how African countries practice agricultural planning and budgeting • Some practices are determined by national planning and budgeting, but some not • Difficult for good managers in ministries of agriculture to promote reform, both within ministries and with MOFsetc and donors • Tendency to focus on process and not results? • Opportunities to build on renewed optimism and generate a culture of progress in ministries of agriculture

3. Purpose • Define the main features of best practice in agricultural planning • Help focus planning reforms • Encourage exchange of experience over which features are most difficult to implement • Help ministries of agriculture focus on improving planning across all elements • Provide a possible framework for agricultural sector budget support

4. Other similar scorecards • Aid effectiveness criteria • PEFA (but AAPS would be less of an external audit and more of a management tool) • Transparency Scores • Ease of Doing Business Scores • Corporate Social Responsibility Indices • Technical reviews/benchmarks • Irrigation costs • Energy being led by CDKN

5. Management and use • Scoring done by group of experienced but independent experts, after discussion with government • Annual reporting to a central coordinating body that maintains consistency and evolves methodology (CABRI?) • Lobbying tool: • For reformers within ministries • For international support (as reward for recent success or future plans) • Evaluation of efficiency of agricultural spending (eg correlate scores with agricultural growth)

6. The criteria • Strategy • Existence of an up to date national agricultural strategy • Clear role of government for each department • Realistic medium term resource allocations in strategy • Prioritisation and Budget • Separate budgets for departments • Recurrent and capital budget jointly managed • Implementation and Management • Expenditure constrained by budget not cash negotiation • Monitoring • Use of performance indicators by department • Estimation of benefits of major initiatives • Evaluation • Feedback from farmers and stakeholders to government

7. 1: Existence of an up to date national agricultural strategy • Government decisions on priorities should be guided by a clear sector strategy • No sector or sub-sector strategies approved in the last ten years. • Out of date sector strategy and no plans to renew, but some sub-sector strategies. • Out of date sector strategy, but plans to produce a new strategy in the next two years. • Fully up to date sector strategy covering most sub-sectors.

8. 2: Clear role of government for each department • Need for clarity on what government does and what is done by the private sector • Lack of any clear statement on government’s role. • A variety of different statements some of which are overlapping and/or inconsistent. • Ongoing process for clarifying roles, with good expectation of results within one year. • Clear and explicit roles for government, private sector and civil society for each department in agriculture strategy.

9. 3: Realistic medium term resource allocations in strategy • Sector strategies are of limited use if they are not linked to resource allocation • Latest strategy or associated plan has no references to resources. • Latest strategy or associated plan has an incomplete indications of costs, but no spending limit. • Latest strategy or associated plan has a complete estimate of costs but with no limit. • Latest strategy or associated plan includes an estimate of expenditure for each department constrained by projected funding availability.

10. 4: Separate budgets for departments • Some countries have only one budget line for the whole of the Ministry of Agriculture, which makes it difficult to see how priorities are managed • Single budget for the whole ministry and no internal reporting. • Single budget for the whole ministry internal management processes to monitor performance • Separate budgets for each department but limited use of the budget for routine management. • Separate budget of each department and use of budgets for managing expenditure.

11. 5. Recurrent and capital budget jointly managed • Many countries separate the recurrent and capital budget, often because of donor dependency • This overloads of the recurrent budget or collapse of project initiatives • Also often results in projects including recurrent costs • Separate planning and reporting to MoF and MoP, with projects prepared independently with donors • Separate planning with in the ministry, but compilation and joint submission to MoF • Separate project planning but compilation within departments • Integrated budgets in the ministry, with full analysis of recurrent cost implications

12. 6. Expenditure constrained by budget not cash negotiation • In periods of low revenue, the ministry may receive less than its budget which creates big problems for department managers • Expenditure is mostly allocated every week or month by negotiation between departments and does not follow the budget. • Expenditure follows the budget for between four and eight months of the year. • Expenditure is mostly allocated according to the budget and is normally cut proportionally, if insufficient budget is available. • Expenditure is almost always in line with budget.

13. 7: Use of performance indicators by department Results based management requires performance indicators to be defined and used • No performance indicators defined. • Inadequate set of indicators defined. • High quality set of indicators defined, but no use of indicators. • High quality set of indicators defined and used for monitoring and management

14. 8: Cost benefit analysis for major initiatives Prioritisation of initiatives should refer to a definition of benefits and, where possible valuation of the benefits – ie Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) • No CBA used within government and no capacity to use any donor CBA. • Some CBA for major initiatives, but undertaken by experts and not used by the ministry. • Government requires CBA to be done for large initiatives and capacity exists, but limited use. • Government regularly does CBA, at least on major initiatives and uses this for prioritisation.

15. 9: Feedback from farmers and stakeholder to government • Evaluation (both ex-ante and ex-post) requires feedback from beneficiaries to understand the successes and challenges facing departments • No feedback and participation. • Ad-hoc feedback and participation for occasional initiatives. • Policy and procedure exist for feedback and participation, but are not widely used. • Policy and procedures exist and are widely used.

16. Other possible criteria • Coordination with cross-sectoral policy • Budget revisions influenced by policy (ie more than incremental budgeting) • Clear procedures in ministry budget to handle unpredictable revenue (eg contingencies, pipeline projects …) • ? • ? • ?

17. Quick exercise • Fill in the form for your country on the basis of your personal viewpoint and knowledge (5 mins) • Compare with one other colleague from your country and consider variations (5 mins) • Answer the questions on the form • Any disagreement with any of the criteria or scoring? • Any suggestions for additional criteria? • Does everyone know already what is best practice? • Would countries be prepared for the possible embarrassment (as well as showing off success)? • Would it be politically OK to have an independent assessor? • Could the criteria be used to lobby MoF for more budget or donors for budget support? • Would you like to participate?