Livestock Entrepreneurship

INTRODUCTION

• A project is a specific plan or design presented for consideration.
• It is a location specific activity with specific objectives, time and cost limitations and of non-repetitive nature.
• In banking, projects refers to an activity in which financial resources are expended to create capital assets that produce benefits over an extended period of time and which logically lends itself to planning, financing and implementing as a unit whereas, UNIDO defines a project as a proposal for an investment to create and or develop certain facilities in order to increase the production of goods/services in a community over a certain period of time.
• Projects are common term used by many to denote specific action plans.
• Project can be long term or short term, limited or comprehensive, single sector concentrated or multi sector concentrated.
• Project Evaluation is a step-by-step process of collecting, recording and organizing information about project results, including short-term outputs (immediate results of activities, or project deliverables), and immediate and longer-term project outcomes (changes in behaviour, practice or policy resulting from the project).
• Common rationales for conducting an evaluation are:
  • response to demands for accountability;
  • demonstration of effective, efficient and equitable use of financial and other resources;
  • recognition of actual changes and progress made;
  • identification of success factors, need for improvement ;
  • validation for project staff and partners that desired outcomes are being achieved.

Importance

• Evaluating project results is helpful in finding answers to key questions like
  • What progress has been made?
  • Whether the desired outcomes were achieved, if not why?
  • Are there ways that project activities can be refined to achieve better outcomes?
  • Do the project results justify the project inputs?