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The project approach is one of the widely accepted ways of fighting poverty, creating employment, socially empowering the marginalised and stimulating community and national development.
Development agents like governments, the United Nations, and non-governmental organisations have since the late 1940s, used this method, mostly in the developing world.

The community projects involve skills training, assistance in drafting project proposals and most importantly disbursement of financial and material support by the funding agent to the beneficiaries.

Our government adopted this approach at independence, implementing it alone with the grassroots, or in partnership with development partners, but always geared to assisting women, youths, the poor or other disadvantaged communities. Many have been implemented and are in progress across the country – among them community gardens, infrastructure construction and chicken rearing in rural areas as well as interventions to socially empower women and orphans.

An evaluation of this approach to influencing development shows that while there have been successes here and there, failure is more prevalent.  Notwithstanding the challenges, the government has continued to try the project method.

In 2011, the government, together with four financial institutions IDBZ, CBZ, Stanbic and CABS launched the $10 million Kurera/Ukondla Youth Fund designed to fund youth-led development projects. It represents one of the biggest funds for social and economic empowerment of youths, a critical segment of our society which is also recognised as marginalised, particularly given rising joblessness in a failing economy.

But with Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment, Deputy Minister, Cde Mathias Tongofa saying a staggering 84 percent of beneficiaries of the fund have defaulted on loan repayments; we may need to rethink this approach to fighting poverty and unemployment.

“The youth loan fund programme is not going according to plan because some people who were allocated money are now poorer than before,” he said.  Because of the failure by beneficiaries to repay loans, IDBZ, CBZ and Stanbic have frozen the facility but CABS remains committed to forging ahead.

IDBZ chief executive, Charles Chikaura, told the parliamentary committee on indigenisation and empowerment recently that out of $450,750 it disbursed; only $197,391 was recovered.

“At this stage these loans are non-performing. There is still a chance to recover the money from the projects if the economic environment improves. But if all fails, we will have to litigate.”

The effective collapse of the Kurera/Ukondla Youth Fund does not bode well for future interventions of the same nature. Poor project proposals cannot be one of the reasons for failure because the four financial houses are credible institutions that none of them could fund a project which they know beforehand isn’t bankable.

Rather, the problem is attitude on the part of beneficiaries, poor project execution on the part of youths and the funding partners. Connected to poor implementation is slack and irregular project monitoring and evaluation. Furthermore, there is no way we can overlook the impact of the prevailing economic challenges in the collapse of the fund.

On attitude, there appears to be a general feeling among many of our people to believe that anything they are given with government involvement is free.  The fact that the fund is targeted at the 18-35 year group does not help matters. This is an age group that is beginning to grow into responsible adults, thus tend to take serious issues lightly. Many of them therefore may have misused the money or simply neglected to repay the loans. This is a negative culture that must be defeated. Government has to educate the people that public funds are not necessarily free funds; the money must be spent effectively, paid back for others to benefit next time.

On another note, we feel that regular and tougher monitoring and evaluation of the projects is very critical in ensuring their success. When a project is monitored regularly and government and funding partners institute mid-term evaluations, weaknesses can be identified as the project is being implemented and corrective action taken promptly. This is an established principle in project implementation and evaluation. It works; it prevents a situation whereby government and its partners discover that 84 percent of loans are not performing four long years after disbursement of money.

The other point is that the loan allocation in 2011 coincided with economic challenges that have caused the collapse of mainstream industries countrywide.  Youth projects cannot be immune to the vagaries of the economy.

Government will clear the way for possible litigation against defaulters as Chikaura said, but we advocate a case by case analysis to determine which can be pursued or which not to. A nuanced approach to this is expected, but our youths must be more responsible and accountable when handling public funds. Litigation, or a serious threat of it can make them more responsible, thus ensure project success.