Lesson Learned

Root cause analysis is critical to successful project design, especially where behavior change is integral to the program logic.

Root cause analysis is critical to successful project design, especially where behavior change is integral to the program logic. The Irrigated Agriculture Project did not result in the increases in high-value crops that were projected during project design. This could either be because the root causes of farmers’ failure to increase production of high-value crops were misdiagnosed (i.e. the problem was not water, training or credit) or the project as implemented did not adequately address those causes (i.e. improvements to the irrigation system were not sufficient to actually increase access to water and increases in irrigated land or training of only a subset of farmers receiving improved irrigation was insufficient). It’s important that the program logic developed during project design be based on evidence about what the root causes of a problem are and then implementation should align with that program logic. MCC has addressed this lesson through MCC’s revised guidance for compact development, which requires a problem diagnosis phase immediately after the constraints analysis. During this phase, the key root causes of the binding constraints are analyzed in order to ensure sufficient understanding of the problems that the project will be designed to address. The next phase of the development process includes building strong project logics for the proposed compact program.