Experimentation in rural development: Kenya's special rural development programme

The author, who was a major contributor to the Institute for Development Studies' Second Overall Evaluation of the Special Rural Development Programme (Occasional Paper No. 12, 1975), presents here some of his personal observations and conclusions concerning the S.R.D.P.. He evaluates the Programme in terms of its success as an experiment, its record in improving project preparation and implementation, its success as a system of development administration, the coordination of projects and progress towards integrated rural development, the achievement of local involvement, and its performance as a medium for foreign financial and technical assistance to the rural sector. He concludes that a great many positive results have emerged from the Special Rural Development Programme, but the results have frequently been disappointing. The shortcomings of the Programme stem from the fact that it was not given the best chance to succeed in the first place and reveal the great difficulty of making headway in the promotion of social and economic change. This accentuates the heed for pre-testing and closely monitoring rural development programmes, along the lines envisaged in the S.R.D.P..