I recently read a LinkedIn post about a bamboo plantation project in Malawi that failed less than a year after implementation.
On paper, the project made sense:
• climate-friendly crop
• income-generating potential
• strong development narrative
But in practice, it collapsed.Why?
Because beneficiaries found irrigation too tiresome and not worth the cost. Because the trade-off simply didn’t make sense for them, a year later, all that was left were shrivelled stalks.
What could have been done differently?
If investors had focused more on outcomes, they would have focused on effectiveness, which ultimately would have led them to review the evidence on smallholder irrigation challenges in Africa and identify irrigation as a known friction point.
There is already substantial evidence that irrigation can be a major pain point for smallholder farmers in terms of cost, labour, and maintenance.
If they had stress-tested assumptions in their Theory of Change, they would have asked whether the intervention aligned with real farmer incentives.
Traditional impact investing metrics might have captured:
• hectares planted
• farmers onboarded
• inputs distributed
But welfare measurement asks a different question: did this intervention actually improve people’s lives? That shift matters, especially over the long term. This moves us from activity to effectiveness.
Without a welfare lens, there is a risk of funding solutions that look good on paper but fail in practice.
