Evaluation of the HortiFresh West Africa Programme

The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Accra (EKN Accra) commissioned SEO Amsterdam Economics to conduct the final evaluation of the HortiFresh West Africa programme (hereafter HortiFresh). The HortiFresh programme was led by the Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation (WCDI) and co-implemented by four consortium partners: SNV, Resilience BV, Advance Consulting and SENSE. EKN Accra funded the programme and managed the evaluation. SEO conducted the evaluations jointly with its partner MDF Training & Consultancy, with fieldwork carried out by MDF West Africa. This evaluation was conducted simultaneously with SEO’s evaluation of CORIP and SWAPP.

Key findings:

• HortiFresh was well designed to contribute to a more competitive and innovative F&V sector as well as a conducive business climate.
• Regarding objectives on inclusion and environmental sustainability, the programme’s relevance was less apparent.
• HortiFresh largely addressed the main constraints that were identified in the F&V sector, and as such was relevant to the sector, especially in Ghana.
• In terms of its alignment with other national government or donor interventions, the programme fit well with donor and national government objectives.
• HortiFresh is likely to meet most of its targets, but for some indicators data was missing.
• Internal capacity and resources had a significant impact on effectiveness.
• The M&E framework was strong overall, but indicators lacked a disaggregation by country and sector.
• While not all data were available for a complete efficiency assessment, HortiFresh seemed to have used its resources efficiently.
• There was some evidence of take up of HortiFresh strategies and activities by other policy and public/private organisations in Ghana.
• Continuation and scalability of its outcomes and systems change has not yet been fully achieved, but will likely materialise to some extent in Ghana.
• The sustainability of VSLAs in Ghana seemed promising.