MCC’s rural development projects are often built around interdependent multisector investments; however, in practice, separate implementation of these projects often occurs as they move at different speeds with distinct stakeholders. MCC should remove dependencies except when absolutely needed or consider how to structure these investments to ensure alignment. In Ghana, the Agriculture Project expected that complementary investments in farmer training, land access, access to credit, and rural roads would support agricultural productivity and farmer access to markets. However, in practice, the implementation of roads, agriculture and land programs were distinct and occurred in different locations. The agriculture and Land Tenue Facilitation (LTF) efforts were not advancing at the same rate, and the LTF selected a district in a peri-urban rather than a rural agricultural area. This led LTF to spin off from the Agriculture Project and act as a standalone project. In the end LTF did not lead to the project goal of improving agricultural productivity though it had standalone benefits of increasing off-farm incomes.
Similar occurrences have happened in other land interventions. In MCC’s Participatory Land Use Planning under the Green Prosperity (GP) Project in Indonesia, the land activities moved forward at a quicker pace than the rest of GP and areas selected were distinct from those of GP investments. At other times, the interventions have occurred in tandem. In Senegal, the land and irrigated infrastructure activities implemented in tandem in the same irrigated perimeter.
The key is understanding the critical issues, including whether an interdependency in fact exists or whether there are really separate but related interventions that should stand on their own. The best strategy may be to reduce interdependencies where possible and structure these as standalone projects with their own evaluation assessment and economic rate of return. In cases where interventions are dependent on one another and key to obtaining results, MCC should consider how to best structure these multisector investment to maintain alignment of all project activities.