Effectiveness of risks management systems and performance of agricultural development projects in times of crisis in Bénin

Development project performance is important for achieving development project objectives. This performance is understood when situations of upheaval arise. Risk management is an effective tool that can help projects deal with these situations. The objective of the study was to analyze the influence of risk management systems on the performance of agricultural development projects in times of crisis in Benin. Thus, two agricultural development projects were chosen as case studies. Each of these projects belonged to a type of risk management system (moderate for case 2 and high for case 1) in agricultural development projects in Benin. Effectiveness scores were determined for each risk management system and the annual performance of each project was evaluated. This was followed by a comparative analysis of the effectiveness and performance scores of the two projects. The results of the comparative analysis showed that the project with the high efficiency score was the one with the higher performance and the project with the low efficiency score was the one with the lower performance. The project with low annual performance did not implement any proactive or reactive actions to manage the project risks that were identified, whereas the project with high performance implemented proactive and reactive actions to manage the risks. In short, the effective implementation of risk management at its design and implementation phases allow projects to improve their level of performance even in times of crisis. This contributes to improving knowledge on the importance of effective implementation of risk management in agricultural development projects.