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5.7Effectiveness, Inclusiveness and Sustainability of LUPP’s service delivery models

Assessment of the impact of LUPP’s service delivery models on the poor has not been completed on a systematic basis during the course of LUPP2 and it was not a feature of the recent impact assessment. Instead, the focus has been on the degree of influence made possible by the models and approaches.

In the absence of poverty monitoring and analysis, it is not clear the extent to which there has been a rationalisation of the effectiveness of the models, whether alternatives have been considered and whether these do represent best practice. It can be argued however that models seem to be appropriate, effective and suitable for replication. Further, the evidence of LUPP case studies, background studies and evidence from elsewhere indicate that the models seem likely to be contributing to poverty reduction. A poverty impact assessment would however be of great benefit for future programme design.

Despite being a relatively small programme with objectives of testing models and influencing with, by definition, less focus on beneficiary impact, LUPP has been able to demonstrate and influence both the needs of communities and service models to address them. Several of these (e.g. water supply and micro-credit) are likely to be sustained in some form; there remains a challenge however to ensure community management and accountability and sustainability of support and advocacy networks such as RASME.

6Programme strategy, management arrangements & the consortium

6.1Achievements

6.1.1Programme Strategy

Previous sections have noted the significant successes of the programme to influence policy and practice.

This section notes however that LUPP has not yet articulated a clear strategy for poverty reduction. Whilst the over-arching strategy of provision of services and support to livelihoods development combined with development and advocacy for ‘spaces’ for dialogue between poor musseque-dwellers as citizens and government may be implicit, this has not been clearly articulated. Further, the experience of project partners with individual service delivery models has not been used to articulate a coherent programme for urban poverty reduction.

To some extent the programme remains a combination of model approaches to various types of service delivery and participatory governance. Whilst individually, many of these have been successful and represent impressive achievement, the programme would benefit from an articulated approach to urban poverty based on reaching common positions on the approaches adopted and lessons learnt concerning impact and integration.

The programme should be able to answer questions such as: What has been the impact of the service delivery models? Are these the right/appropriate models? Are there others? Who is benefiting from services delivered and who is not? What would be the benefit of integration of service delivery? Are all interventions needed to have optimal poverty impact? What is the cost-effectiveness/added value of each, or an integration of each?

As such this reflects the lack of a single monitoring and evaluation system. Whilst individual projects have quite comprehensive monitoring systems, there is a lack of integrated analysis, lesson-learning and documentation of failure as well as success.

The influencing outcomes can benefit to a considerable extent from a more rigorous analysis of individual project impact, consideration of alternatives and, through greater practical integration, better understanding of attribution and the potential for a more comprehensive programme approach. A critical element of this would be social analysis and wider poverty monitoring to consider differential impact within the target populations.

Documentation would benefit from more evidence-based analysis in addition to the case-study approach.

LUPP has tended to consider sustainability of the programme as sustainability of individual models. Lack of articulation of a programme may also be adversely affecting replication of service delivery models. The more sectoral approaches of the EU water and sanitation programmes and the UNDP fiscal decentralisation programme may as a result lose important elements of the LUPP community management and governance approaches.

It is important therefore for LUPP to seek to elaborate the programme approach and for this to inform an exit strategy or future phase. This will provide an important basis to influence replication and sustainability.

In this regard, LUPP has been only partially successful in fulfilling the recommendations of the 2005 OPR to:

1. 
   Review and refine the models and approaches to promote best practice
   
2. 
   Be more self-critical to ensure quality and sustainability
   
3. 
   Document the LUPP methods & approaches at different levels for different objectives
   
4. 
   Focus on clear demonstrable outcomes from influencing
   
5. 
   Continue to strengthen collective engagement as LUPP³⁰.
   

6.1.2Management Arrangements

All partners have expressed the advantage of the consortium indicating that it has brought added value through:

• 
  Combining the comparative advantage of each NGO
  
• 
  Combining multi-sectoral experience, different approaches and international experience
  
• 
  Combining long-standing and wide-ranging Angolan knowledge and experience (DW here for 25 years, CARE and SCUK since 1989)
  
• 
  Providing more weight and authority for advocacy.