Be clear about must-have vs. nice-to-have features. As MCC assesses partner country capacity to sustain compact investments, it must consider the impact of aspirational project designs on sustainability of the investment. Building on the lesson above, compacts will sometimes experiment with novel solutions that either are not the most cost-effective option or raise questions about the technical merits. Solar panels were an example of this at the RSRCs—some stakeholders wanted to use this opportunity to prove the potential of solar power and other stakeholders objected because the panels were considered unsustainable and unable to supply enough power to run the facilities. Teams can lose considerable time and goodwill debating such issues. At the time of interim data collection, solar panels only worked well at the Oshana RSRC. According to the final report, at least one RSRC’s solar system still is not working. Selecting the more proven and cost-effective solution might have been a more sustainable solution in the long run. Similarly, the RSRCs arguably did not need mobile library units. The mobile units were delivered at the very end of the compact and according to the final evaluation, were not tested in real-world conditions before handover. Library staff later learned the units were ill-suited to local terrain and weather and are costly to maintain. Like the solar panels, these units were debated extensively during the compact term, with less costly ways of increasing rural access to books and other materials proposed. However, in both cases, the lure of something new or fancy outweighed more practical and economic considerations, such as the capacity of the government to sustain the aspirational features. Future programs should seek to balance the practicality of design solutions with the actual (not assumed) capacity of partner countries to sustain compact investments. Furthermore, given known sustainability challenges in partner countries, MCC should assume a conservative stance when considering actual capacity rather than a more optimistic outlook as was the case here. External, independent reviews could support MCC in assessing the conditions for sustainability and selecting appropriate, conservative designs, particularly in cases where partner countries prefer more ambitious designs that are unlikely to be sustainable.
Lesson Learned