Mozambique

The Transfrontier Conservation Areas and Tourism Development Project for Mozambique received a moderately satisfactory outcome with a moderate risk to development outcome.... Show More + Both the Banks’ and the Borrowers’ performances were moderately satisfactory. In March 2009, a reallocation of GEF proceeds was approved to increase the allocation of funds for training. In September 2009, a mid-term review (MTR) of the Project was conducted and several changes were agreed. The Project Implementation Unit (PIU) adopted these changes immediately after the MTR, including changes in staff, adoption of revised indicator targets and a revised work plan. The corresponding formal restructuring (Level 2) happened in August 2011, due to Government’s delays in officially sending the request for Project restructuring. At the time of restructuring, partial disbursement of IDA credit and GEF grant had been disbursed, and resulted in changes to the Project’s indicator targets, reallocation of Grant proceeds and changes to some Project activities. In March 2012, a second Level 2 restructuring was approved to allow some corrections in the disbursement categories of Consultant Services and Training of the IDA Credit and GEF Grant Agreements. In March 2013, the closing date was extended from June 30, 2013 to June 30, 2014. There were several lessons learned from this project and are as follows: (1) Continued and high-level political commitment to conservation is needed to move the agenda forward, particularly when pressures from other sectors on protected areas are strong. (2) Long-term World Bank engagement in the conservation and tourism agendas is needed to foster institutional changes. (3) Developing nature-based tourism asset is a long-term process. (4) Tourism as a means to generate sustainable financing for PAs. (5) Enhancing the benefits from PAs to local communities needs to go beyond the promotion of tourism, and encompass a broader array of integrated conservation development activities, particularly those related to sustainable natural resource management. (6) Professional facilitation is needed for the public sector to be able to attract private investment into PA concessions. (7) Importance of innovative partnerships in conservation. In order to mitigate the lack of local capacity and appropriate institutional coordination, the Project partnered with NGOs. Show Less -

The Health Commodity Security Project (HCSP) for Mozambique received a moderately satisfactory outcome with low or negligible risk to development outcome. Both the Bank’s... Show More + and the Borrowers’ performances were moderately satisfactory. Neither the PDOs nor the project components were revised. In total the project was extended 18 months over two restructurings. The following lessons were learned from this project: (1) HCSP has shown that an emergency project does not necessarily benefit from the existence of an ongoing operation. HCSP’s reliance on HSDP’s institutional assessment and implementation experience accelerated preparation but introduced elements which later affected implementation. These constraints might have been avoided with a more detailed consideration of the special characteristics of an emergency project. (2) Experience with the Crisis Response Window (CRW) showed that Bank policies and procedures are not always aligned with the need to respond rapidly to emergencies. As a result, the planned emergency procurements were executed more slowly than anticipated. The Bank has since learned this lesson and resolved the issue for future emergency projects. (3) While combining an emergency response with a systems development approach can be reasonably justified, combining the two within a short time frame proved to be problematical. (4) Though Bank policy promotes the integration of project implementation responsibilities within existing Ministry structures, the project offers a caveat for emergency projects. When HCSP sought to integrate the project responsibilities within the Ministry, there were significant delays and a lack of clear responsibility; once an independent Project Implementation Unit (PIU) was established, implementation proceeded much more smoothly. (5) Commercial sector supply chain indicators are not necessarily appropriate for the public sector. Though the project attempted to introduce the increased rigor of private sector supply chain management indicators, the effort was not entirely successful because of the way in which the public sector assesses risk. Show Less -