Western and Central Africa - Senegal River Basin Climate Change Resilience Development Project (English)

Ratings for the Senegal River Basin Climate Change Resilience Development Project were as follows: outcomes were satisfactory, the Bank performance was satisfactory, and the monitoring and evaluation quality was substantial. Some lessons learned included: regional projects often involve the Regional Integration unit and several CMUs, which do not have these regional projects in their portfolio, although they oversee the Bank-country dialogue. It is critical for task teams to keep CMUs involved so that the project can contribute to and benefit from the country dialogue and help solve country-specific issues. A very good example of fruitful collaboration between the task team and the CMU took place in Mali to help address the issues which stalled the implementation of the irrigation investments, and find ways to restore the companies' confidence that their work will be paid, which led them to remobilize and greatly improve delivery progress during the last months of the Project, resulting in increasing the area equipped under the Project from 200 ha to 1,549 ha by the closing date. Properly designed web-based Project monitoring platforms can facilitate the integration and tracking of key Project management functions, such as, technical progress, procurement, and financial management for individual country programs, thereby promoting more effective monitoring, transparency, and coordination of regional operations. Such web-based platforms should ideally have interactive interfaces such as portals that facilitate and capture transparent and timely two-way communication in real time between country-level implementing agencies and regional oversight entities on key aspects such as, invoice submissions, review, and payments, to more effectively track and monitor Project implementation.