Valuable lessons learned in IICD's Country Programme Ghana 2003

The effectiveness of IICD in supporting project formulation and implementation of the various ICT for Development projects in Ghana as well as end-user satisfaction with, and the developmental impact of the various projects are analyzed. A report on a focus group meeting organized to discuss the initial findings of the M&E Partner and his recommendations are also included in the report.

The E-Commerce for Non-Traditional Exports project hosted by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA); the Global Teenager Project (GTP); the Environmental Information Network (EIN) project hosted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of Ghana; and the Ghana.Gov projects, and Ghana Agricultural Information Network System (GAINS) which are all at the implementation stage are all discussed in this report.

Lessons learned about the effectiveness of IICD's assistance in Ghana

The report indicates that all the participants attended the capacity development course to upgrade their skills in various aspects of the projects they are involved. These courses seem to have met, to a very large extent, the goals of the respondents who participated in the various courses.

IICD is also seen as having done a good job during the project formulation and implementation period through its collaboration with the various project partners ensuring that the implementation phase for most projects was very smooth.

The learning outcomes that emerged from the capacity development programmes included project planning, effective management; team dynamics and its impact on the project success as well as the importance of budgets to the achievement of project goals. Participants gained new insights, gained exposure, and learnt new skills and techniques in web content development and project management. Other topics that participants believe will be important for future training programs include aspects of Cost Budgeting; Financial Management and Quantitative analysis; Project Monitoring and Evaluation; Database Management and Networking; and Java Scripting, etc.

User satisfaction and Development Impact of Educational Sector (Global Teenager) Project
The main reason for participating in the Global Teenager Project for most of the students was to develop links with teenagers all over the world and study together with them. For the teachers most of them indicated that they participated in the project to develop skills of integrating their curriculum with technology and to share knowledge and ideas with colleagues and students so as to make teaching and learning easier. Majority of the end-users indicated that they have achieved their goals for participating in the Global Teenager Project. This according to them was because it helped some to know more about unfamiliar countries and their cultures and taught others how to use computers to communicate with other people, and also facilitated the exchange of ideas about other countries. Problems of connectivity and lack of access to computers for the Global Teenager Project could be solved by encouraging only schools who are already connected to the net to sign up for the programme.

The project scores high marks on development impact in terms of awareness creation, empowerment, economic and social effects. The mean impact value for awareness creation and empowerment are over 5.00 whilst those for economic and social effects is just slightly lower. This implies the project has had highly beneficial development impact on the users.

User satisfaction and Development Impact of Environmental Sector (Environmental Information Network) Project
Participants in the environmental information network program had differing reasons for participating in the project. Whilst some participated to acquire new skills in the areas of data and information acquisition, assembly, processing, reporting and sharing, others suggested the need for learning how to maintain and operate a database, and to learn new computer skills to improve efficiency as the main reason for participating in the project. Whilst the beneficiaries of the Environmental Information Network project believe that the project has been successful, they complained about the short duration of the computer training program whilst the project members are anxious to see the start of the second phase of the project.

The environmental information network project could be said to have had a very positive developmental impact. Respondents believe that the project has done more on awareness creation done empowerment. The project also scored high social effects in terms of development impact.

User satisfaction and Development Impact of Livelihood Sector (E-Commerce for NTE) Project
The high expectations of the end-users prior to the commencement of the E-Commerce for NTE project has created a situation where the good efforts of the project team has not been fully appreciated and this resulted in the low ratings on user-satisfaction given by the end-users.. Whilst some of them complained that there is no access to the Internet as promised, no information on the Internet, others said there is no further contact with the organizers after the initial training. The Focus Group meeting suggested that the E-Commerce for NTE project could be improved by encouraging stakeholders to be constantly involved in decision making whilst headquarters continuously keeps in touch with coordinators at the district level so as to ensure that problems associated with the project are readily dealt with.

The project has done more in creating awareness in terms of the possibility to use ICT in E-Commerce. In terms of empowerment, the developmental impact is not as highly felt just like that of economic effects and social effects.

User satisfaction and Development Impact of Good Governance (Ghana.gov) Project
The Ghana.Gov Project has been receiving good ratings by visitors to the website. However it has been impossible to incorporate their comments to the Webmaster into this report because of the sole use of the questionnaire method for information gathering. They survey however indicates that there is a high level of satisfaction with the project from both end-user satisfaction and development impact perspectives.

Recommendations by the evaluation partner

The M&E Partner’s recommendations have been informed by the interpretation and analysis from the questionnaires as well as from the conclusions of the first Focus Group Meeting. All project team members and stakeholders, where possible, should be involved in decision at all stage of project implementation. The M&E Partner recommends that the good relationship between IICD and its partners could be strengthened by continued interaction between them whilst the Capacity Development training programs could be improved by lengthening the duration. Topics to be treated at these Capacity development programs should also be agreed upon beforehand to ensure that the skill training to be offered there is really required by the participants.

This is a summary of a longer report prepared by Prof. A. Baah-Nuakoh of the Department of Economics, University of Ghana. Contact Anne Marijke Podt at IICD for more information on this report and the Ghana country programme. More information on the country programme can also be obtained from Olaf Erz or /countries/ghana

The methodology and approach used are described in an IICD Research Report 5. Request a copy by sending an email to communications@iicd.org or download the full text in word or pdf format.