By the late 1980s, a technically successful and well-regarded project of reforestation that had been carried out in certain communities in Madagascar with the assistance of bilateral aid from Switzerland, was facing new challenges: How to replicate and continue the activities without ubiquitous project interventions? The project has transmitted know-how to the farmers but their capacity to organise and manage independently was still weak and they were lacking initiative. How to stimulate a process of genuinely local development under such circumstances?

Government services in rural areas were poor and fragmented, a legacy of some 20 years of policies favouring an overly centralised approach largely neglectful of the rural areas. The entire approach had to be reconsidered: the farmers were to become the main actors of the project rather than simple executors. A process of selfevaluation triggered dynamics of change. A new strategy was designed and a new programme was adopted, with ...