PREG Partnerships Case Study
This study evaluates opportunities to achieve greater stakeholder collaboration and activity sustainability and institutionalization in the next phase of PREG.
Study Objective, Background, and Methods
This case study explores the factors that have enabled effective collaboration and coordination for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Partnership for Resilience and Economic Growth (PREG) initiative in northern Kenya. The study focuses on the period from 2016–2019, but also includes precursor initiatives to PREG (from 2013) as well as the partnering approach that continued during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. The study provides lessons on the opportunities and challenges for achieving greater stakeholder collaboration and activity sustainability and institutionalization in the next phase of PREG. The learning is also relevant for other operational contexts facing recurrent crises. It does not offer simple or prescriptive solutions, but insights into the emergent practice of building resilience as a partnership and as a complex adaptive system.
Indeed, PREG represents a complex partnership arrangement in a complex setting—a system nested within systems. PREG is situated within a context of recurrent drought, climatic variability, conflict and insecurity and a lack of investment by government and other international entities. The PREG initiative unites multiple USAID partners, together with the Kenya National Drought Management Authority (NDMA), the Government of Kenya (GoK) at national and county levels, and other international organizations in a development agenda for the arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) of northern Kenya. It also reflects the shift toward county leadership and self-reliance at the local level through Kenya’s devolution strategy. PREG serves as an umbrella mechanism for multi-sectoral USAID programs and humanitarian and development partners to strengthen resilience in nine ASAL counties: Baringo, Isiolo, Garissa, Marsabit, Mandera, Samburu, Tana River, Turkana and Wajir. Across partners and implementation areas, appropriate and effective layering, sequencing and integration of activities is central to PREG’s approach for strengthening resilience and realizing collective impact. This approach has coalesced as the convergence of services, articulated in the USAID/Kenya Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS) for 2020–2025.
The consultant team from Technical Assistance to Non-Governmental Organizations (TANGO) International used a multi-stage research design to investigate partnership mechanisms, opportunities and constraints across institutional levels and target areas. The study began with a document review and collaborative study design phase, followed by an inception mission used to identify and refine key characteristics of partnership with Nairobi-level stakeholders. In November 2019, TANGO researchers carried out additional key informant interviews (KIIs) with PREG stakeholders in Nairobi, as well as field work in two counties (Isiolo and Turkana), which represented a variation in context and PREG activities at the county level. In May 2020, TANGO remotely conducted six follow-up KIIs (national and county levels) to explore the impacts of COVID-19 on PREG partnering and coordination. The follow-ups also examined perceptions of the pre-pandemic mechanisms that have supported continued partnering during the pandemic. In total, TANGO collated nearly 100 program-related documents, and conducted 18 Nairobi-level and 50 county-level discussions with both small groups and individuals. This summary is organized around the study research questions. The learning from this case study will inform PREG going forward and, more generally, institutional partnerships to strengthen resilience at scale.
Case Study Learning
What frameworks, processes, and mechanisms contribute to effective collaboration and coordination across diverse partners, multiple geographies, and levels of implementation? What are the primary constraints?
Preconditions for partnership: PREG partners have made tremendous efforts to coordinate under the umbrella of PREG: building mutual trust, a shared identity and common agenda, and also bringing partners together for collective action. Built-in flexibility by USAID starting at the proposal and design stage is an important foundation for adaptive programming and partnership. USAID/Kenya has ensured resilience is a common vision across sectors and activities by including improved resilience as one of four development objectives in the CDCS 2020–2025. At the time of the fieldwork, the study team found that they needed a shared results framework to guide PREG partners in their contributions to resilience building. The new CDCS calls for a Mission-wide approach to fit-for-purpose integrated programming, with improved resilience of vulnerable people and environments as a core objective, and the development of metrics to measure integration outcomes and partnership effectiveness.
Shared conceptual understanding: Since 2016, PREG has shifted in both its programming and partnership approaches — from implementing activities in isolation to integrating activities with partners and facilitating systems-level change. In the Collective Impact model, this signals the significant conceptual and behavioral change needed to foster a move toward systemic collaborative work. PREG partners discussed the big conceptual shift in programming that took place when the cornerstone activity of PREG shifted from Resilience and Economic Growth in Arid Lands – Accelerated Growth (REGAL-AG) to the Livestock Market Systems (LMS) Activity; from a focus on implementation to facilitation of systems, policies and capacities. This new kind of programming required a different conceptual understanding among USAID partners of their respective roles and how to execute them. The inclusion of strengthened resilience among vulnerable people and communities in the USAID/Kenya CDCS further supports PREG’s integrated programming and engagement with county government and communities.
Technical expertise: There is a role for PREG in technical capacity strengthening of county government counterparts on converging humanitarian and development assistance and resilience. A resilience-oriented response to recurrent shocks may necessitate more emergency contingency programming or crisis modifiers in PREG planning.
Institutional and operational mechanisms: The backbone support provided by the PREG Secretariat and Africa Lead, along with developing various concrete tools and practices, have helped the PREG teams improve partnering and coordination. The biggest challenges to joint work planning and coordination are the variation in project cycle timelines and the large level of effort required for coordination. Again, the critical steps to strengthen PREG going forward are the new USAID/Kenya CDCS, coupled with the establishment of County Liaison Teams (CLTs) and Collaboration, Learning and Adaptation (CLA) program officers at the county level, and a common Mission-wide results framework to guide measurement of integration outcomes and partnership effectiveness.
To what extent have PREG partners sequenced, layered, and integrated at multiple levels (national, county, ward/community)?
PREG partnering and coordination has ramped up since 2016, when various processes and mechanisms were established, such as the PREG Secretariat, regular county team meetings, joint work planning and activity mapping. National-level mapping and Sequencing, Layering and Integrating (SLI) overall: USAID/Kenya has supported PREG partners with activity mapping, including Geographic Information System (GIS) maps and dashboards, which help partners visualize present and past activities to support collaboration and coordination. The layering planning process at both national and county levels has helped identify key areas for improvement in planning. Overall, the number of well-integrated or layered locations is small, but growing, with various showcase sites that provide inspiration for the transformative potential of SLI or convergence of services. As noted previously, the new CDCS prioritizes integration of activities wherever appropriate and feasible.
County-level resilience platform: At the county level, PREG is a core member of the County Steering Group (CSG), led by NDMA, as a multi-sectoral and multi-agency platform to support emergency monitoring, contingency systems and emergency response. NDMA serves a crucial and strategic role at the national level, and is valued at the county level for expertise in drought monitoring and assessments. The study findings suggest that while the CSG serves a convening role, there is a need for a strategic resilience coordination platform to engage county government officials and external donors. The recent USAID Mission CLTs may help support such county-level resilience platforms, which include government representatives, donors and implementing partners.
Community- and ward-level planning: Some PREG partners have started engaging communities through the ward development planning (WDP) process, which was in the pilot stage at the time of the study. The WDP presents an important opportunity to support and scale up local governance, advocacy and accountability mechanisms, helping to “institutionalize” development objectives at the community level.
What contributes to institutionalization, scale, and sustainability of activities?
PREG is directly engaged in programming at three levels — national, county, community — and supports the pathways for coordination and communication among these levels. As PREG activities are institutionalized across these levels via dedicated government funding and policy, there is more potential for sustained activities and outcomes. Thus, PREG’s partnership approach importantly reflects Kenya’s commitment to self-reliance at the local level, and contributes to USAID’s Journey to Self-Reliance (J2SR). The study noted various practical challenges of partnership with government, such as activity co-creation, joint budget planning and implementation, which PREG and USAID/Kenya more broadly seek to address through the new CDCS.
PREG has benefited communities through building community ownership of development and governance processes. Among the numerous benefits of increased PREG coordination, such as less duplication and leveraging of resources and expertise, many PREG partners have been satisfied with the potential for sustainability and community impact that comes from enhancing their partnership and coordination with government, particularly at county and local levels. One key informant (KI) referred to this process as mutual accountability for impact. There is an opportunity to include more explicitly this objective of building trust in institutions across these multiple levels as one of PREG’s objectives.
How do the challenges of a complex environment affect capacity to coordinate and partner, and how has COVID-19 affected the partnerships?
Prior to the pandemic, this study did not collect evidence that the complex environment affected collaboration more than the usual risks and challenges the partners were largely accustomed to addressing in their operations. Prevention measures to slow the spread of COVID-19 caused unprecedented disruptions to PREG operations, as with resilience and development programs globally. A subset of follow-up interviews explored how COVID-19 has affected PREG
partnerships and programming, including challenges, adaptations and even opportunities that have arisen.
Virtual/remote coordination and communication have been effective because of the trust and teamwork established prior to the pandemic among PREG teams and with the government and other partners. As a result, PREG partners were well-positioned to quickly pivot, leverage resources across partner agencies and integrate COVID-19 mitigation and response into activities on the ground.