Coordination support for the Agricultural Sector Study of Congo Congo

Context of the service

The Congolese Government, with the support of the African Development Bank (AfDB), had decided to conduct an Agricultural Sector Study (ASS), which consisted of (i) the development of an exhaustive diagnostic assessment of the agricultural sector in the broad sense (agriculture, livestock, fisheries, forestry) via a large-scale agricultural census (more than 6,000 questionnaires retrieved) and (ii) the preparation of a National Programme for the Revival of the Decentralized Agricultural Sector in each of the 12 Departments.
The scope of ASS was immense, both in terms of the subjects to be covered (analysing a host of very diverse issues: natural resources, economics of agricultural and agro-industrial sectors, agronomic research, livestock, inland fisheries, gender, rural finance, land, infrastructure, etc.) and the areas concerned (rural sector profiles and agricultural development strategies, for each of the 12 departments).
14 national experts and four international experts, led by two coordinators, one national and one international, were mobilized over more than a year. As the AfDB decided to bring forward the end of ASS by six months, SOFRECO called on ad hoc expertise to (i) to revise the 12 regional diagnoses and the national diagnosis on agriculture, livestock and fisheries, (ii) make concrete proposals to improve these documents in accordance with the requirements of the terms of reference and support the coordination of national experts for the corrections to be made,

Services provided

In a very short time, the 12 draft monographs could be revised, both in substance and form. This required frequent back and forth between the various national experts (each in charge of a particular theme: natural resources, economics of agricultural and agro-industrial sectors, agronomic research, livestock, inland fisheries, gender, rural finance, land, infrastructure), raw survey data and bibliographic data.
In addition, specific recommendations were given to SOFRECO's headquarters to facilitate the management of this complex study involving many experts, raw data and computer documents:
- In computer matters: define simple classification trees and procedures in terms of archiving and antivirus passing,
- In terms of subcontracting management: recast the general timetable and ensure the allocation of job descriptions and terms of reference for each expert, quickly identify a national expert to assist the national coordinator and an international junior expert who will be based in Brazzaville, ensure regular supervision missions from headquarters,
- In terms of coordination of the processing of raw data: the information collected through the questionnaires having been partially analyzed, define new processing methods to be followed by each expert, subsector by subsector.

Summary of the service

Support for the coordination of the study of the agricultural sector of Congo: Revision of the 12 regional diagnoses and the national diagnosis on agriculture, livestock and fisheries; Concrete proposals to improve these documents in accordance with the requirements of the terms of reference; Support to the coordinator and national experts for corrections to be made; Recommendations in terms of management and processing of raw data.