Do area development projects have a future?

This paper argues that ADPs have considerable potential to inform PRS and similar processes within this ‘new architecture’ of aid.Increased donor attention to Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) processes and to budgetary support have meant reduced funding for Area Development Projects (ADPs). Does this trend risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Specifically, this paper argues that PRS processes have a ‘missing middle’ – they envisage greater impact on poverty, and propose changes at policy and strategy level in order to achieve this, but are weak on the practical arrangements for delivering poverty-focused initiatives.It concludes that ADPs exhibit wide variation in scope, content and performance. There is considerable scope for improving their impact in two dimensions.Their conventional mandate of reducing poverty within a geographical area could be met more fully if they were to:identify sub-groups of poor people more clearly, and target them more specificallyidentify appropriate public and private roles more clearlyimprove prioritisation and sequencing to reduce the risk of élite capturemainstream cross-cutting themes such as gender and environment more stronglyinterpret principles of learning, ownership and sustainability in a more nuanced way.ADPs have much potential to inform PRS processes, but in order to do so more fully, they must:be underpinned by thorough baseline surveys, so that change attributable to the project can be more fully identified and quantified and the lessons generated more convincingensure that the conceptualisation of poverty used in ADPs is up-to-date, so that they can readily relate to larger processes improve ways of disseminating project results to government and other donors, and of linking them into national and provincelevel decision-takingwork with government to put in place the preconditions for pro-poor change on a wide scale, including, for instance, an appropriate enabling/facilitating framework in relation to the private sector, and a strengthening of people’s capacity to voice their requirements (and of government to listen and respond)identify channels by which lessons from the project can feed into higher-level processes such as PRSPs[author]