Project Details.

With USAID/Pakistan’s assistance, Pakistan’s Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) completed the Sadpara Dam near Skardu in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) in 2012 with the multiple objectives of generating electricity to relieve chronic load shedding in Skardu, enhancing access to domestic water, alleviating downstream flooding, and increasing the supply of water for irrigation. The irrigation infrastructure associated with Sadpara Dam, the left and right bank canals (LBC and RBC, respectively), was to carry the additional water to areas outside the traditional Sadpara Lake command area and extend irrigation to about 15,500 acres. 

USAID/Pakistan designed SDP to enhance agricultural outcomes associated with the additional irrigation water Sadpara Dam was expected to deliver. It implements the U. S. Dollar (USD) 19.75 million SDP through a cooperative agreement with the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) with a sub-award to the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP). 

The project focused on improving irrigation infrastructure to make more efficient use of water, establishing community and government institutions to maintain irrigation infrastructure and manage water, providing grants to agribusinesses to spur adoption of modern production and processing technologies and practices, and contributing to an enabling environment that was expected to facilitate agricultural sector growth. Project objectives include improving water use efficiency, increasing the irrigated area from about 2,689 acres to about 15,500 acres, enhancing agricultural production, increasing the incomes of about 8,547 households by 15 percent (Rs. 61,959), and creating about 4,850 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs. The qualitative data was collected through interviews. 

Mr. Himat (HCPL) conducted 45 interviews with individuals as well as groups. The participants included implementers, beneficiaries, and stakeholders. Himat also did cite visits in the Sadpara dam command area. He produced detailed transcripts of each interview, reviewed the transcripts to identify themes relevant to answering the evaluation questions, used MAXQDA to code text segments illustrating the themes and identify patterns in the themes, and analysed the coded segments to develop detailed evidence of if and how AKF/AKRSP’s design and implementation of SDP had contributed to achieving intended results.