Sustainability Of The Foreign Assistance In Agriculture – Macedonian Experience

Macedonian agriculture has received substantial donor support in the past two decades. Now, when most of those donor projects are completed, this paper looks at what have been the most important factors for achieving sustainability, and how the level of sustainability of the foreign assistance in the agriculture can be improved. The analysis is based on 8 different foreign donor projects in Macedonia. The data collection is done through a primary research – interviews with stakeholders of those projects, and secondary research – already existing publications on the topic. In the analyzed cases the achieved sustainability of the results is not on a required level. The factors that contributed to this can be seen in the lack of political support, socio-cultural aspects, institutional aspects, economic and financial aspects as well as the external factors. This gives basis for recommendations for the main stakeholders and potential users of this paper: the national government to ensure that the donors’ country strategies are in line with the national strategies; to the donors to use the participatory approach in the project design; and to the beneficiaries (farmers) to take greater responsibility and commitment for ownership of the achieved project results.