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Nowadays, most of development work is of the advisory kind with actual hands-on implementation not only taking a back-seat, but also having its reputation tarnished as it is realised that, ultimately, we are not responsible, so we should stick to enabling those who are, and stay in the background.

Arguably, practical and hands-on skills have been lost in the move away from technical (and often specialised) support to advisory (often general) services. This is not to say that we should move back to planting crops and driving tractors, because the argument that this was not sustainable still stands. However, we may be able to recapture some of that hands-on and down to earth way of working, by connecting the different perspectives of our present advisory support.

Projects providing advisory services often adopt, by necessity or consequence, the perspective of the actor they support. Each of these perspectives has its own value and often significant momentum is created by the successful teamwork of partners and their advisors. It is often said that it is difficult to translate momentum into action, but this can be confused with the flurry of activity that comes with planning, meeting and pledging commitments. Even more difficult seems to be the translation of momentum into traction, by which is meant the rather more calm, gradual, step-by-step but sustained move forward. For this traction to happen, cross-fertilisation of perspectives could prove useful as it can add flexibility, innovation and networking to even the best advisory services.

Supporting public private engagement from different perspectives

A recent study for the GIZ on Public-Private Engagement in Agriculture involved interviewing a range of agriculture advisors in different projects at different levels. These projects all sought to support private sector development, stimulate private investment and strengthen public-private exchange, but each from a different angle. The biggest contrast in approach is between projects whose services target predominantly the private sector and those who support mainly public sector actors.

Advisory services directed at private sector actors seem to have two characteristics in common: They meticulously amass a thorough knowledge of their subject area and they tend to follow a trial and error approach in first designing and then finetuning their support instruments.

This is illustrated by how the instrument of Matching Grants evolved while used in the context of the Regional Value Chain projects: Its original design of a grant matching a private investment was accompanied by technical training such as on parboiling techniques for rice. But reality showed that the real bottleneck is not technical but rather a lack of business skills, so now most of capacity development focusses on this.

Further, already at the design stage, the intention was to offer Matching Grants to partnerships of value chain players, and not on an individual basis. In the case of rice, an effective partnership includes producers, millers, processors, traders and transporters. Legal rules require that the contract is signed by a single representative who is responsible for the partnership.

In the past, even when people would boast of strong linkages at the time of contract signing, it often turned out afterwards that they had hardly met with the other partners they claimed to represent. So now, Matching Grants are only issued when Memorandums of Understanding are produced that are signed by all members in the partnership. These changes have turned a good concept into a robust instrument for value chain development.

Those who provide advisory services to the public sector often have to make do without this trial and error component, because even though the ultimate objective of their advice may be similar, there is a longer causal chain involved: Advice to the public sector tends to focus on frame conditions with reform of policies, the strengthening of institutions and capacity development as conduits of change. But these channels suffer from long reaction times and often much effort is invested in a concept before it proves unworkable. An example may be the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition launched by the G8 in 2012 as a Pan-African initiative with the aim of supporting national governments reform policy in such a way that it helps private investment in agriculture.

A Secretariat was set up at the Africa Union, stakeholder platforms were established, New Alliance country coordinators were employed, some with offices and staff. After five years and some unease about progress, an evaluation offered a sobering view on the impact of this large-scale instrument. Donors withdrew funds, the Secretariat in Addis Ababa closed, and the future of country staff and structures is unsure. Of course, lessons were learned, but there is a substantial risk that these lessons will simply go on to spawn the next instrument that takes half a decade before its flaws become apparent.

Naturally, New Alliance’s anchorage of at continental level made it even more ‘remote-controlled’ than support to national level frame conditions already is. In fact, there are good examples of agriculture projects that have improved conditions for private sector development. The National Potato Council of Kenya (NPCK) was set up with support of with German development aid. Its success has inspired other countries: Rwandan potato producers visited the NPCK and are now setting up a national potato council of their own.

What has made advisory services supporting public-private engagement work?

The Public-Private Engagement in Agriculture study asked advisors what critical component in their or their project’s approach had had the biggest impact. This is a short summary of their views:

Adopt a commodity focus as a way to make advisory services focused on tangible issues. Even where the advice is about general private sector development, a focus on actual commodities helps put facts, figures and faces to what would otherwise risk being too general and bland a discussion.

Support value chain associations as these are often the best drivers of change, because they include players up and down the chain and small as well as larger producers tend to be part of them. ‘Les Interprofessions’ are institutionalised nation-wide value chain associations, common in francophone Africa but the model can be useful also elsewhere.

Experiment with inclusive business models that improve access to inputs and services for small and large producers. The GIZ Regional Value Chain projects have amassed four years of experience with different types of models, with adaptations by value chain and country.

Don’t focus too narrowly on policy even when the assignment is to provide agriculture policy advice. A demand for policy change and an idea of the kind of change needed is most clear and convincing when it is a spin-off of bigger-picture problem-solving activity.

Build up a thorough knowledge of markets as markets are more complicated than a first glance suggests. Cocoa is made into a huge range of products with many stages and players. Before a cotton shirt is bought it passes around the world twice; the raw cotton, its fibres, the woven cloth, the coloured textile, the shirt in the shop to the shirt in the shopping bag.

Oligopolies must be broken down before trade can create equitable development. Market research, educating governments, clever use of the press, win-win solutions and mediating between the families that dominate a value chain and other players are proven ways for doing this.

Stop ignorant governments from being abused by unscrupulous businesses by giving them neutral market information. Big business often peddles false information under the guise of ‘market studies’ that overestimate costs of production, underestimate value-add potential, quote false supply and demand figures and underrate profit. In the absence of other information, governments have signed away commercial opportunities they were not aware existed.

Bring the biggest players on board because, important though it is that smallholders have a voice, for anything to work a critical mass must be on board and that means a critical mass of the marketed volume. Big players must be part of the dialogue for change to happen.

Investigate IT-based opportunities and invest in IT-based solutions such as the fertiliser subsidy by e-Wallet (Nigeria) or e-Vouchers (Zambia), e-Granaries that act as virtual warehouses (Eastern Africa), or even more innovative, the scratch labels on seed packets to protect against fake seed (Kenya).

Reinvigorating public sector advisory services and upscaling private sector success

The potential action-radius for the above examples is often much larger than their current area of impact. Many innovative solutions are limited in their span of action, either because at some point they hit a ceiling in the form of policy, legislative or regulatory constraints or they lack a multiplier vehicle in the form of an agriculture strategy at national, regional or even continental level.

This is where the cross fertilisation between advisory support to the public sector and that provided to private actors is extremely useful: Effective public sector support can offer leverage for the multiplication of private sector success.

Lessons from private sector support could infuse realism in the advice targeted to the public sector and lead to more feasible and flexible support instruments being designed.

In this way, policy advice to the state can become more pragmatic by building on tried-and-tested private sector support and it can create pathways for the upscaling of proven private sector innovation.