3.1 Conclusions

This chapter presents the evaluation conclusions on UNDP performance and contribution to development results in Chad, and related recommendations.

Conclusion 1. UNDP has been a long-standing development partner of national authorities, enabling continuous support to key government functions on significant areas of the country’s National Development Plan. The fluid institutional and political context, marked by heightened social tension, has limited the sustainability of previous efforts and the scope of UNDP support to institutional capacity-building, limiting the prospects for uptake and scale-up. The UNDP contribution has been more focused towards downstream, community-level interventions for peacebuilding and to respond to socioeconomic vulnerabilities in crisisaffected areas.

UNDP has been a key partner of central ministries and has extended continuous support on important dimensions of Chad’s national development, such as development planning, electoral assistance, and the national malaria programme. The country programme period under review was marked by important changes in the institutional landscape, including two constitutional reforms, frequent governmentwide reshuffles and prolonged strikes in the private and public sectors due to the security and economic crises. In addition to delays, this has resulted in gaps in the institutional anchoring of UNDP interventions, with limited opportunities for the necessary longterm planning, and limiting the potential uptake and scale-up of the technical assistance and policy advice delivered.

Conclusion 2. UNDP was successful in leveraging financing from various vertical funds and core resources, but the fragmentation and small scale of funding has limited its ability to anchor and sustain its interventions over the longer timeframe required by the operating environment. While the launch of larger programmes in this period provides positive prospects, the current funding structure of the country programme poses significant threats to the positioning and financial sustainability of the country office and limits opportunities for portfolio management and integrated programming.

UNDP Chad operates in a challenging funding environment marked by the predominance of humanitarian financing and limited opportunities for in-country resource mobilization, on which UNDP programming depends. While UNDP was successful in leveraging various funding opportunities, the fragmentation and scale of funding mobilized have affected its capacity to sustain and deepen community-level interventions, anchor its activities in long-term programmatic engagement, and adopt a portfolio approach to its programming. The launch of the local chapter of the regional stabilization programme and the PADLFIT programme, if funded, represent significant developments for country office positioning, but the current level of resources available for programme expenditure in core areas of the UNDP mandate is insufficient to address the surging and compounding vulnerabilities of development challenges in Chad.

Conclusion 3. UNDP has been an important partner supporting economic revitalization and peacebuilding in the various human security crises faced by the country, but there is limited evidence of the overall contribution and effectiveness of its support in building sustainable community-level resilience. While UNDP support to reducing economic vulnerabilities provides much appreciated and needed support to communities, UNDP project intervention strategies demonstrate limited differentiation over time.

UNDP interventions in the area of social cohesion, peacebuilding, environment and inclusive growth have predominantly consisted of reducing economic vulnerabilities while promoting mechanisms for conflict management and trust building between community groups and local authorities. While a similar intervention model can be noted in the implementation of previous early recovery interventions, the programme has generated limited evidence of the effectiveness of its interventions or conditions for success beyond the duration of activities. Livelihood intervention models

have been similar in the various focus areas (local development, PVE, early recovery) and between programming periods, which may limit the perceived added value of UNDP support in these different areas.

Conclusion 4. UNDP is recognized as a key interlocutor on environmental and climate change adaptation issues, but its positioning has remained weak in relation to the severe climate vulnerabilities faced by the country. There is urgent need to accelerate climate change adaptation and DRR agendas and enhance synergies with conflict prevention interventions and other areas of the programme portfolio.

UNDP was able to grow its portfolio compared to the previous country programme period, but it has remained small in scale and below the CPD expectations. Significant delays need to be overcome to accelerate progress and enable climate information and risks to inform programming practices in Chad. There is scope to enhance UNDP positioning in this area and strengthen its approach to integrated programming, given the surging and compounding effects of environmental degradation and climate change on conflict dynamics and existing fragilities in all other areas of the UNDP portfolio.

Conclusion 5. The country office has lacked an approach to knowledge management and a dynamic M&E system to promote adaptation and learning across its programme portfolio in light of the fluid development context. Shortcomings in the results framework and the absence of a theory of change have limited the country programme’s potential for adaptive and portfolio management. The country office M&E system is limited to monitoring the implementation of project activities without evaluating their medium- and long-term impact. While this level of reporting is important, it is insufficient to support dynamic adaptive management practices given the level of complexity of development challenges in Chad. Poor archiving and low attention to knowledge management have also limited opportunities to draw from past experiences and inform current programming practices and in-country thought leadership.

Conclusion 6. UNDP has made progress in mainstreaming gender in its programme interventions during this country programming period, but its contribution has been mostly gender-targeted and not sufficient to promote change in norms and practices, albeit in an unfavourable enabling environment. UNDP needs to make a more sustained commitment to support GEWE.

Drawing from the gender marker results, UNDP has made concerted efforts to integrate gender into its programming strategy compared with the previous country programme period 2012-2016, where most of its portfolio had limited consideration for gender mainstreaming. This has translated into improved gender-targeting in project interventions, and in some cases gender-responsive interventions, but these have remained small in scale at this stage. The implementation of the country office gender strategy has not been prioritized.