Kampala — PRESIDENT Museveni is infuriated that the Government effort to eradicate poverty and improve livelihoods is being undermined by corrupt officials. The President's outburst comes at a time when analysts are saying that the Poverty Eradication Action Plan, launched in 1997, has not had a significant impact.

A lot of money has been injected into this project. But 12 years down the road, there has not been a broad improvement in rural well being. The big question is: Why are these anti-poverty programmes failing and who is taking the money for the poor?

One of the problems is that many anti-poverty projects are conceived and implemented without clearly assessing the needs of the beneficiaries or the target audience. For instance, in the Northern Uganda Social Action Fund (NUSAF), it emerged that much money was embezzled.

Every development campaign should have a target audience, whose characteristics are known. Some experts have become concerned that instead of addressing the poverty needs of the population, some officials entrusted with the implementing the projects go on spending binge on luxurious items.

The success of anti-poverty projects requires design of programmes which are compatible with the high level of illiteracy and a low level of school completion in rural areas. This calls for a component on technical skills in the project.

The current development projects are also dominated by statistical information, which can hide the real situation of target populations. Anti-poverty project designers need to do a critical assessment of what works and what does not work before rolling out further projects. Supervision of these projects also needs to be strengthened.

The failure of the projects is a combination of the poor project design and implementation and corruption.

Efforts aimed at stamping out corruption should be supported in order to help the marginalised rural communities. The need for punitive action on the corrupt officials is now more urgent.