Project Governance: Implementation and Institutions

For a brief time, the ‘green revolution’ exported by China to West Africa brought Liberia, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia a little closer to their goals of rice self-sufficiency. Many of the innovations introduced by the Chinese disappeared leaving only the smallest trace of institutional memory. Others were adopted by local farmers or by government officials convinced of their value, and thus even today reflections of Chinese practice can be seen in scattered areas of West Africa: the bright green of transplanted seedlings standing in an irrigated paddy, or the flash of sickles at harvest time. Yet several puzzles remain after our examination of China’s green revolution technologies. First, the successful adoption of the complete package of China’s irrigated rice technology was rare, even when it appeared to be an appropriate and profitable technology for local farmers. And second, although all three projects started with much the same design: higher technology agrotechnical stations with lower technology village extension areas, they diverged markedly by the end of their five year lives. The Gambia merged China’s independent agrotechnical stations with its own rice program, bringing the Chinese firmly under Gambian management. Liberia shifted from agrotechnical stations and village farmers, to a large-scale rice plantation. Only Sierra Leone maintained the autonomous agrotechnical centers operated by the Chinese with a high degree of autonomy from the Sierra Leonean government. Both puzzles call attention to the importance of institutional factors.