Background

1. Arid Lands Resource Management Project – Phase II (ALRMP II), project number
P078058, was the successor project to ALRMP (P001331) which operated from July
1996 to June 2003 and was funded by the Bank, covered 22 districts with total IDA
disbursements of USD19.24m. ALRMP was, in turn, a successor project to the
Emergency Drought Recovery project (EDRP) (P001369) which operated from April
1993 to June 1997. ALRMP II was initially approved for an IDA loan of USD65.99m.
Additional IDA financing of USD52.4m and a trust fund of USD5.59m was sought and
approved under this project by the Board in late 2006 which made the ALRMP II a
USD124m Bank funded project and increased the number of districts covered from 22 to
28. A successor project to ALRMP II, Kenya: Adaption to Climate Change in Arid and
Semi-Arid Lands (KACCAL), project number P091979, has been approved by the Board
but implementation is pending the outcome of this audit and any follow-up measures
required. ALRMP II was made up of three components – drought monitoring,
community driven development (CDD) and support for local development (SLD).
Significantly CDD was the single largest activity (21.9%) of the project after funding the
National and district co-ordination units (23.2%) (source: PIP for ALRMP II page 14).

2. The first two anticipated benefits of the project relate to CDD project goals, the original
PIP stated the project was “expected to generate a variety of social, economic and
institutional benefits, which will strengthen sustainable livelihoods of the target
population:

1. Community Empowerment: The Beneficiary Assessment of ALRMP I highlighted the

importance of empowerment as a benefit per se. ALRMP II will, through design
improvements, further strengthen social capital and the voice of marginalized
communities and increase their capacity to determine and implement their own
development priorities.

2. Improved enabling environment for wealth creation: Reducing conflict and insecurity
will create a more favorable environment for enterprise development. Greater access
to financial services will also stimulate income diversification and open up new
opportunities for innovators and entrepreneurs. This will lead to an increase in
incomes and employment opportunities.(source: PIP, page 10, Anticipated Benefits)

3. The drought monitoring initiative component for ALRMP II was to build on the work of
phase I of ALRMP, namely the implementation and strengthening of data collection and
to institutionalize the drought management initiatives within GOK systems. The project
acknowledged that in addition to data collection and analysis, interventions at the
community level were also required, hence the need for the remaining components. Due
to a number of issues, including governance, phase I designed the drought monitoring
system by establishing its own District structure, through the establishment of District
Steering Committees (DSGs) with the responsibility to determine the local interventions.
The DSG is a government committee chaired by the District Commissioner whose
members are the various district departmental heads, and whose function is to coordinate

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