The private sector has become an important partner in development interventions that aim to make market systems more favourable for smallholder producers and low-income consumers of food. In these programmes, public funds support private ventures.
Theory based evaluations are widely used to evaluate private sector programmes which navigate dynamic environments seeking adaptive programming avenues. A new IDS Bulletin presents real-world experiences of impact evaluations in private sector development programmes that aimed to respond to the funders’ accountability requirements and the learning aspirations of the implementing agencies. The experiences are from Nepal, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana and Kenya, and a business coaching programme that works globally. These programmes primarily target agricultural markets and value chains to make these more inclusive for smallholder producers.
The session will present the approaches and methods used in these evaluations to produce credible and actionable insights for real time learning and adaptive management, answering the two interrelated questions that are key to contribution analysis: Did the intervention contribute to the change process? Did the contribution matter? These methods employed include process tracing, impact perceptions surveys (contribution scores), qualitative impact protocol, and the use of behaviour change models in market system analysis.
Speakers:
Giel Ton is a Research Fellow at IDS, University of Sussex, and Director of the Centre for Development Impact (CDI). He specialises in the design of mixed-methods impact evaluations in private sector development programmes. He favours contribution analysis as approach to theory-based evaluation.
Sietze Vellema is Associate Professor in the Knowledge, Technology and Innovation group at Wageningen University. He leads Action Research with the 2SCALE programme at the Partnership Resource Centre.
The Centre for Development Impact is hosting this webinar as part of gLocal Evaluation Week 2022. gLOCAL Evaluation Week is an annual M&E knowledge-sharing initiative convened by the Global Evaluation Initiative in association with local and global partners. The 2022 gLOCAL Evaluation Week will take place between May 30 and June 3, 2022.
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