Charles Davy, Managing Director, Afghanaid – Written evidence (AFG0018)

1. The UK has provided more than £1 billion in development assistance to Afghanistan 
since2001. How would you assess the effectiveness of this support? On which areas should the United Kingdom focus its development assistance over the next 5-10 years? 

From my experience, over the past seven years that I have been in Afghanistan, DFID has played a leading role in providing financial and technical support to:

• contractors and NGOs such as Afghanaid, Oxfam and Save the Children 
• the Afghanistan Humanitarian Fund (AHF), a pool fund managed by UNOCHA which then supports humanitarian projects implemented by NGOs and UN agencies, as well as 
• the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF ) which is managed by the World Bank and the Government of Afghanistan, with projects such as the National Solidarity Programme (NSP) and the Citizens Charter (CCAP) then partly being implemented by NGOs. 

In the case of my own organisation, Afghanaid, we were an implementing partner of the NSP for the 13 years to 2015 and we have been an implementing partner of the successor programme, the Citizens’ Charter Afghanistan Program (CCAP) since 2017. This is the World Bank's flagship project in Afghanistan and is recognised globally for supporting the legitimacy of Government, creating village level councils that play a critical role in governing each community and linking to Central and Regional Government, coordinating development and providing essential community infrastructure. 

For four years from 2015 to 2019 Afghanaid ran a large, sixteen million pound, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) project  across 8 of the most flood disaster-prone provinces, directly impacting over 3 million villagers,  It was an innovative and highly effective programme that brought together the concepts of natural resource management, disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and resilient livelihoods.  

We have also received funding from DFID to support the economic empowerment of thousands of rural women in two successive four-year projects. These projects provide literacy training, vocational training in home-based enterprises, help women form self-help/savings groups and to start small enterprises. We find these projects to be especially powerful in enabling both husbands and wives to work, enabling them to diversify and increase family income and thereby withstand economic shocks more effectively. In turn, women’s economic empowerment enables families to lift themselves out of poverty, to improve their nutrition and reduce food insecurity, to access clean water, afford to send children to school, and to visit the doctor when they are sick. Moreover, women’s economic empowerment has a profound impact on building women’s self-esteem, enhancing the respect of other family members, giving women a voice in family and community decision-making, and dramatically reducing the incidence of domestic violence. 

In implementing each of these projects, despite the fact that security policies keeps DFID/FCDO largely desk-bound and rotations can be quite short, Afghanaid has found the DFID team in Kabul to be very well informed, technically skilled and highly supportive. In the case of the CCAP, despite the fact that DIFD does not provide as much funding as the USA, it has played very much a leadership and convening role. DFID has been the largest donor to the AHF and has consistently shaped funding allocations and driven quality programming. In implementing the above referenced DRR and CCA project, the DFID team was intimately involved, providing regular guidance and oversight. It has been a true pleasure to work with such talented and well led individuals and teams. 

As to where assistance should be focused going forward, from Afghaniad’s perspective it is on grassroots economic development. That includes natural resource management – better water and management to keep water in the hillsides, slowing run-off and preserving topsoil, through largely green engineering, landscaping, and irrigation systems,  thereby reducing the disaster risk, and creating the conditions for climate resistant crops and rehabilitating the rangelands for animals. Then improving farm technology and developing market linkages and value chains. This will improve the yield and return on investment and both allow ordinary farmers to lift themselves out of poverty and create jobs.  Concurrently, there needs to be long-term efforts to improve literacy and numeracy among the adult population, especially women, to further improve the quality of education, and ensuring that women are encouraged and supported to play an active role in all aspects of Afghan economy.

Of course, if there is a peace agreement then there will need to be special consideration given to reintegrate Taliban fighters and demobilised soldiers. In that respect I think the emphasis needs to be on integrating them into their own communities through services that are offered to all – otherwise if they projects are exclusively for former Taliban fighters then suddenly everyone will be a former fighter. 

Finally, it is critically important that the FCDO stays the course, funding long-term development programmes of five, ten or fifteen years as the economy improves and the Afghan Government  develops capacity and assumes ever greater responsibility.