Development Intervention as Adaptation : Where are the Long Run Effects?

The effects of development interventions can be positive, neutral or negative, prompting calls for adaptation to enhance their effectiveness. Consequently, adaptations have become a component of intervention implementation processes. This paper explores whether adaptations enhance the effectiveness of development interventions. Through a set of programmatic interventions for smallholder dairy improvement in Kenya, this paper explains how the project was adapted by actors, the context in which the adaptations occurred and their long run effects. The methods involved thematic synthesis of project documents and interviews with farmers and key informants. The results show that despite adaptations of the project by developers and farmers, sometimes mutually, in the long run, due to the limitations imposed by changing contexts, dairy improvement diminished rather than intensified and the project led to exclusion of poor farmers. This paper points to the limits of adaptation as a means to enhance the effectiveness of interventions in dynamic contexts