Interview with Governance Expert Charfeddine Yakoubi

As part of the regional project Towards Sustainable Agricultural Policies and Practices in the Middle East and North Africa, the Arab Watch Coalition (AWC) supported its members in Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt in strengthening their capacity to monitor and evaluate World Bank-financed agricultural projects. This included analyzing project documents, understanding World Bank policies, conducting field monitoring, engaging directly with beneficiaries, and producing independent, evidence-based evaluations.

In Tunisia, AWC’s member organizations focused on the independent evaluation of the World Bank-financed Support to Economic Recovery and Job Creation in the Agri-Food Sector and Rural Space in Tunisia project, implemented under the Tunisian Rural and Agricultural Chains of Employment (TRACE) program. The US$4 million project aims to support economic recovery and job creation in rural areas by strengthening the participation of smallholder producers, producer organizations, small and medium-sized enterprises, and agri-entrepreneurs, with a particular focus on women and youth in the governorates of Jendouba, Kairouan, and Gabes.

The independent evaluation assessed the project’s progress toward its social and economic objectives, examined transparency and accountability in implementation, evaluated beneficiaries’ awareness of the project’s environmental and social standards and grievance mechanism, and documented their experiences and perspectives on the project’s impact. It combined a review of project documents with interviews with key stakeholders and field research involving beneficiaries across the three target governorates.

In this interview, Governance Expert  Charfeddine Yakoubi of Onshor reflects on his experience monitoring and evaluating the project and shares the key lessons learned from the process.

1. Before working with AWC on this project, how did your organization engage with World Bank-funded projects? What did you know about how these projects work, and what changed?

Before working with the Arab Watch Coalition (AWC), our engagement with World Bank-funded projects was limited to general information, particularly the financial aspects of these programs, such as project costs and repayment periods. We did not have a detailed understanding of how these projects operated and relied mainly on information published in local media or official communications from the World Bank, without a deeper analytical perspective.

The loan itself was generally viewed as an achievement, without considering its long-term costs or asking more fundamental questions about the conditions attached to it and what commitments these institutions require from the Tunisian government in return.

Through our participation in AWC, our understanding of these projects became much more comprehensive. We learned how to access information from different sources, navigate disclosure mechanisms, and develop stronger analytical skills to assess project design and implementation. We also gained the ability to monitor project impacts and evaluate whether they were achieving their stated objectives.

Equally important, we became familiar with grievance mechanisms and developed the capacity to conduct objective, evidence-based monitoring and evaluation.

2. Monitoring a World Bank-funded project requires navigating a lot of technical documentation—project appraisal documents, safeguard frameworks, implementation reports. How did you approach that, and what skills did you develop through the process?

We began by collecting project documents from different sources and breaking the project down into its key components in order to understand how it was designed and what it was intended to achieve.

We then identified and analyzed key information, including project activities, eligibility criteria, implementation procedures, target indicators, and the conditions attached to the financing.

We compared these commitments with implementation reports and reported results. The next step was field verification through direct engagement with beneficiaries, allowing us to assess outcomes on the ground and identify gaps between what had been promised and what was actually being delivered. This process also enabled us to document challenges faced by beneficiaries and develop recommendations to help address similar issues in the future.

Through this experience, and with the support of the Arab Watch Coalition, our organization reached a new level of professionalism and developed several important skills, including:

• Conducting critical and in-depth analysis of development projects, including understanding project budgets, the hidden costs of financing, and the conditions attached to the financing.
• Using the World Bank’s access to information mechanisms and other disclosure tools available through international financial institutions.
• Producing monitoring and evaluation reports grounded in evidence, data, and field findings.
• Translating complex technical information into accessible language, helping communities better understand their rights and the projects that affect them.

3. When you went into the field in Jendouba, Kairouan, and Gabes, what did you find that the official project documents didn’t show? What was the gap between what the program said it was doing and what communities were actually experiencing?

Our fieldwork in Jendouba, Kairouan, and Gabes, together with our direct engagement with beneficiaries, revealed some gaps between what was presented in the official project documents and what beneficiaries experienced in practice. The documents portrayed a well-organized project that was successfully delivering financing, training, and follow-up support. The report confirmed many of these strengths, as it was an objective assessment based on field evidence. At the same time, field observations and beneficiaries’ responses to the survey revealed several areas of weakness, most notably beneficiaries’ limited awareness of the grievance mechanism, variations in the beneficiary selection process, administrative complexities, delays in the provision of equipment and supplies, and a heavy reliance on informal networks to access information about the project.

4. The evaluation found that most beneficiaries had no awareness of the grievance mechanism despite it formally existing. What does that tell you about how these programs are designed versus how they actually reach people?

One of the key findings of the evaluation was that most beneficiaries were not aware that a grievance mechanism existed, despite the fact that it had been formally established and had already received complaints.

This suggests that the challenge is not necessarily the existence of the mechanism itself, but whether it actually reaches the people it is intended to serve. The issue is not having a grievance mechanism on paper; it is ensuring that beneficiaries know about it, understand it, and can access it in practice.

This requires clearly communicating the mechanism, explaining it in accessible language, and integrating it into all stages of engagement with beneficiaries. People need to understand their rights and know how to use the mechanisms available to them.

5. What was the most meaningful moment of community engagement during the project: a conversation, or a finding that stayed with you?

One of the most meaningful moments of this project was meeting one of the women beneficiaries, who shared her story and showed us her business. She had not only benefited from the program herself, but had also succeeded in changing her family’s perception of women’s role in economic activity. She convinced her father and brothers, who work in agriculture, to let her use a small space and convert it into a small olive oil processing facility. More importantly, she did not stop at production. She also convinced them of the value of packaging and marketing their products more effectively, rather than relying solely on traditional methods of selling. Over time, the business became an important source of income and eventually generated the highest income in the family.

The significance of this story goes beyond the success of a small business. It reflects a deeper social transformation, as a woman moved from a relatively subordinate position within a fairly conservative family environment to becoming an influential economic actor, capable of making decisions, persuading her family, and creating added value from a simple local resource. For me, this was one of the most meaningful moments of the project because it demonstrated how targeted support can not only improve incomes, but also reshape relationships within families and the local community.

6. What would you tell another civil society organization in the Arab region that wants to do this kind of accountability work but doesn’t know where to start?

The TRACE evaluation shows that the best place to start is with a dual approach that combines document analysis, interviews with officials, and field research involving both beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. This combination makes it possible to identify inconsistencies that might otherwise remain hidden. Official figures may appear positive, but field interviews often reveal challenges related to transparency, beneficiary selection, implementation delays, and limited public awareness of people’s rights and grievance mechanisms.

It is important not to focus only on quantitative results, such as the number of beneficiaries or jobs created. Equal attention should be given to assessing the quality of governance: How does information reach people? Who is aware of the grievance mechanism? Who was excluded, and why? Are the procedures clear and fair?

The most important lesson from the evaluation is that accountability is not only about tracking funds and measuring results. It is also about understanding people’s experience of the project.

Finally, I encourage organizations to start with a small but diverse sample in order to build practical experience that can be expanded over time. It is equally important to maintain thorough documentation, ensure confidentiality, listen carefully to beneficiaries, give them the space to speak openly, and earn their trust. This is what gives accountability work its credibility and transforms it from general criticism into evidence-based accountability.

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