Cross border trade in the Great Lakes region – an impact evaluation

Kevin Croke Maria Elena Garcia Mora

Markus GoldsteinMichael O’Sullivan

Sabrina Roshan

outline• Rationale• Project and impact

evaluation description

• Status report• Preliminary

conclusions and lessons learned

Project rationale• Africa Region Gender Practice:– Focus on generation of evidence about economic

empowerment, voice/agency, and endowments

• Cross-border trade identified by Africa Region Trade Practice as: – Important for regional economic growth– related to ongoing conflict between DRC and

Rwanda– A gender issue (90% of traders are women)

“Risky Business” Africa Trade Practice Report (Jan 2011)

• Recommendations– Officials should be sensitized that small

scale traders are not “smugglers”– policy transparency vis-à-vis tariffs– border officials need training on gender

issues– Improved infrastructure needed– Increased representation of traders

through associations

Ligne Frontière

DGM, DGDA, OCC, PNHF

Our intervention• Context: larger World Bank trade project on

upgrading the border posts• World Bank funded local NGO to train:– Cross border traders on tariffs and legal

procedures– Border officials on governance and gender– Joint workshops for both groups

• Additional activities:– Training for trader association formation; media

information campaigns; provincial level comité de pilotage

Impact evaluation• Focused on training intervention– Project has macro-level institutional

interventions coupled with more discrete individual-level interventions

– Individual training comprises a large portion of International Alert’s activities under the project

Logic of intervention• Traders lack information about

correct border procedures, tariffs, and taxes – “walking in the dark”

• Officials lack information too: mistaken view of informal trade (“smugglers” perception)

• Question: IS INFORMATION ENOUGH?

Baseline Data Collection• In August/September 2011 data was collected

from:

– 628 small-scale traders (324 treatment/324 control)– 66 border officials

• Collaboration with Catholic University of Bukavu– CUB staff led focus group discussions– Training for students on survey implementation– Local CUB “call center” for mobile component

Baseline survey• Incidence of harassment and gender

based violence– 28% had been spit on or insulted in last

month– 6% had been hit in last month– 2% of respondents suffered rape/attempted

rape in last month– 5% report some form of SGBV in last month–Most frequent perpetrator DRC police

Corruption and gender-based violence

% of traders affected

number of traders affected / number of incidents

Number of incidents (DRC)

Number of incidents (Rwanda)

Corruption (individual incidence)

31% 191 183 18

Confiscationof goods

14% 85 64 34

SGBV (incidence)

5% 32 32

SGBV (number of events)

61 40 21

Mobile phone data experiment• Starting in Fall 2012, mobile phone

tracking was attempted• But…highest contact rate achieved

was <50%• Mobile phone component temporarily

shelved

Challenges & Lessons: Collecting data in a turbulent setting

• Initially mobile data collection seen as a way to deal– mobile, hard-to-reach population– “noisy” outcome variables

• But face to face worked better than mobile– No DRC bidders– uncharged phones– capture by spouses/sales

Challenges & lessons: institutional issues on the ground

• Border officials rotate frequently, despite project efforts

• Conflict delayed project and data collection

• Regional government has bigger things to worry about – which puts our work on the back burner

Challenges & lessons: collaboration?

• Project works across a number of different units– brings a range of perspectives– but makes contracting, approvals, funding

quite difficult • Security protocols hinder travel• Cross border projects raise issues of how

teams work across CMUs• Differences of opinion with the

implementing partner

The Way Forward• End-line survey– planned June/July 2013

• Program continuation or alteration?