Learning and outreach event on scaling-up 14-15 June

1. Learning and outreach event on scaling-up
14 June 2012, Rome, IFAD HQ
Monitoring and Impact Evaluation
for Scaling-up
Thomas Elhaut, Director, Statistics and Studies for Development Division , SKM, IFAD
Marzia Perilli, M&E Specialist, Statistics and Studies for Development Division , SKM, IFAD

2. Why are we discussing this?
• IFAD IX goals (from 2010 to 2015)
– Reaching people: from 43.1 million to 90 million
– Moving people out of poverty: from 34.5 million to 80 million
• Implications, at midterm:
– Efficiency increase: 4.5%
– Effectiveness increase: 16%
• Requirements:
– We need to know:
• what works, where, why, how?
• what to scale-up, how?
• how scale up impact?
– Learning agenda, indicators, methods: M&E and IE systems
– “Agility” to respond with ongoing portfolio and new programmes

4. the missing links :
understanding cause to effect relations
• 15 million people out of poverty
• impact is significant and measurable,
while questions remain:
– net income impact: +120 % (vs +48% in non-project areas) ?
• the differences in impact between projects or between provinces
(+34% to +520%) ?
– women: income +63%; disease incidence -26 %; illiteracy -28% ?
– grain production, per capita: 65% (range 21% to 149%) ?
• 70 % of project activities are non-farm
• understanding impact pathways

5. Six “theory of change” pitfalls to avoid
Stanford Social Innovation Review
“Learning organizations carefully specify their assumptions, regularly reflect on
whether those assumptions are bearing out, and consider what new assumptions
they might test to further improve impact.
One simple but powerful mechanism to accomplish this is to create a “learning
agenda”—a simple list of assumptions and hypotheses that your organization can
test at some frequency.
A learning agenda can help ensure that your organization’s theory of change is
constantly revisited”
http://www.ssireview.org/blog/entry/six_theory_of_change_pitfalls_to_avoid

6. How many learning agendas in IFAD?
Areas of thematic focus
1 Natural resources – land, water, energy and biodiversity.
2 Climate change adaptation and mitigation.
IFAD Strategic Objectives 3 Improved agricultural technologies and effective production services.
SO1 A natural resource and economic asset inclusive financial services.to climate change, environmental degradation and
4 A broad range of base that is more resilient
market transformation;
5 Integration of poor rural people within value chains.
SO2 Access to services to reduce poverty, improve nutrition, raise incomes and buildopportunities.
6 Rural enterprise development and non-farm employment resilience in a
changing environment;
7 Technical and vocational skills development.
IFAD Macro-Level Goals & Poor rural women and men and their organizations able to manage profitable, sustainable and resilient farm and
SO3 Objectives
8 Support to rural producers’ organizations.
Lead rural poverty reduction initiatives based take advantage
1 non-farm enterprises or on small-scale agriculture;
2 Help countries scale up successes through IFAD-funded operations;
of decent work opportunities;
3 Expand its policy engagement; women and men and their organizations able to influence policies and institutions that affect their
SO4 Poor rural
4 Strengthen its pro-poor partnerships with a range of actors, including other United Nations agencies, public and
livelihoods;
IFAD Programme and Project-Level Goals & Objectives
private donors, and commercial enterprises that can and resilience in small-scale assets and services to rural areas;
Enhancing environmental sustainability bring pro-poor investment, agriculture;
SO5 Enabling institutional and policy
1
5 Enhance its knowledge broker and advocacy role.
2 Promoting win-win contractual arrangements production and the full range of related non-farm activities.
environments to support agricultural to help small agricultural producers seize opportunities at lower risk in
agricultural value chains;
3 Supporting the development of technologies for sustainable intensification of small-scale agriculture;
IFAD Cross-cutting Principles
4 Increasing the capacity of financial institutions tocountry context; range of inclusive services to poor rural people;
1 A differentiated approach based on provide a broad
5 Promoting the capabilities of rural women and men, including young people;
2 Targeting;
6 Capitalizing on opportunities to use renewablepoor rural people; the farm and community levels, and promoting low-
3 Supporting the empowerment of energy sources at
cost technologies using local resources to provide energy at the village level.
Promoting gender equality and women's empowerment;
4
5 Creating viable opportunities for rural youth;
6 Innovation, learning and scaling up;
7 Effective partnerships and resource mobilization
8 Sustainability.

7. Smallholder farming: a theory of change

8. Brookings: Spaces for Scaling Up
• Fiscal / financial space
• Natural resource/environmental space
 Policy space
 Institutional
 organizational/staff capacity space
• Political space
• Cultural space
• Partnership space
 Learning space

9. The broader evidence base of KM
Economic and financial analysis
Monitoring and evaluation results
Statistics
Internal IFAD data
Composite indicator(s)
State of the art thinking
Evidence-based state-of-the-art thinking
Scaling up

10. IFAD IX agenda
• Reporting on results in 2015:
– 90 million people reached
• Project M&E
– 80 million people out of poverty
• sample survey of portfolio (stratification?)
– Lessons learnt: 30 evaluations (of which 6 RCTs)
• Mixed methods
IFAD Project Types
• By project type
1 Agricultural Development
• ASAP (ECD) 2 Irrigation
• Improving M&E systems 3 Livestock
4 Rural Development
– RIMS +++ 5 Credit and Financial Services
– National capacity building 6 Fisheries
• Partnerships 7
8
Marketing/Storage/Processing
Research/Extension/Training
– IFPRI: methodology
– 3IE: agricultural project evaluations
– USAID, IFAD, FAO, WFP, WB, BMGF, … DFID, JPAL
• Informal network
• learning agenda, common indicators and methods
• peer review
• Country focus ? : Bangladesh, Ghana and Tanzania

11. Food Security Learning Agenda (FSLA)
• Dimensions of the Learning Agenda
with specific evaluation questions:
1. Improved Livelihoods, with a focus on Rural Productivity
2. Enhanced Management of Natural Resources and Adaptation to Climate Change
3. Improved Research & Development for Agriculture and Nutrition
4. Expanded Markets and Value Chains
5. Improved Policies, Institutions, and Investments for Food Security and an Enabling
Environment
6. Enhanced Nutrition and Dietary Quality
7. Increased Resilience of Vulnerable Populations
8. Improved Gender Integration and Women’s Empowerment
 Scaling up framework
• Shared indicators:
– RIMS
– global goals (MDG1), agricultural index
– Common set of indicators
• Methods

12. Convergence of learning agendas
(draft 2012)
Bangladesh
Tanzania
Ethiopia
Rwanda
(2007)
(2011)
Ghana
(2007)
(2008)
(2007)
(2012)
India
Mali
FtF Learning Agenda IFAD's Thematic KM priorities
Improved agricultural productivity Agricultural production (adoption and
x x x x X
1 farm management)
Improved research and development Improved agricultural technologies and
X x x x x x x
2 effective production services
Expanded markets, value chains and Inclusive chains, from input supply
increased investment through marketing, processing and x x x x x X
3 retailing
Improved nutrition and dietary quality
4
Improved gender integration and
X x
5 women's empowerment
Improved resilience of vulnerable
x x x X
6 populations
Natural resources management - land,
X x x
7 1 water, energy and biodiversity
Climate change adaptation and
X x x
8 1 mitigation
A full range of inclusive financial
x x x x x x X
9 3 services
Rural enterprise development, with
X x x x x x
10 3 non-farm employment opportunities
Technical and vocational skills
development, especially for young x x x x X
11 1 farmers and other rural entrepreneurs
Support to rural producer organizations
x x x
12 6 and across all themes

13. Next steps
• Tomorrow: business session on the corporate M&E agenda
• Issues paper and EB information paper
– Poverty definition
– Methods and issues
– Worksystems
– Adequate funding
• Training
– Impact Task Force
– Induction training
– Staff training programme
• EB information paper
• GC seminar

14. thank you