The Agriculture Science and Technology Project, supported by a US$30
million ADB loan, helped the Vietnamese Government to institutionalise
market-based research and bring knowledge and learning gained through
research to serve farmers in remote upland areas, and to strengthen the
human and physical capacity of the national system for agriculture
science and technology.
The project, which involved 42 organisations including research
institutions, vocational schools, extension services, and farmer’s
unions, strengthened government initiatives for stronger links between
applying agricultural research to upgrading the skills of farmers, and
helped the system become more responsive to the needs of smallholder
farmers and private sector.
The projects pioneering solar technology in Thailand, and ensuring
access to quality education for the poor in Mongolia during the
financial crisis also won the Most Successful Project Awards.
The three, which best showcased the ADB’s contribution to Asia and
the Pacific, were chosen from 80 projects reviewed by Independent
Evaluation, an oversight body within ADB that assesses the
organisation’s effectiveness, and has held the Most Successful Project
Awards since 2015.
“Evaluations not only provide evidence of project success or failure,
and show whether precious public funds were well invested or not, but
also lessons to improve the effectiveness of projects and solutions to
unfolding development problems,” says Vinod Thomas, director general of
Independent Evaluation at ADB.
“The winning projects, as well as meeting their objectives, all offered
lessons for achieving development results in their areas of operation,
which can be replicated and enlarged in similar projects by ADB, other
development institutions, and national decision makers. In short, they
all offered tremendous learning experiences,” says Thomas.
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