Poverty Reduction, Livelihoods, and Jobs

Educational impacts of an unconditional cash transfer program in Mali

Innovation process tracing assessment: Methodological approach and guiding principles

The “Rethinking Food Markets and Value Chains for Inclusion and Sustainability” Initiative aims to provide evidence on what types of bundled innovations, incentive structures, and policies are most effective for creating more equitable sharing of income and employment opportunities in growing food markets while reducing the food sector’s environmental footprint. The Initiative targets approximately 30,000 individuals across six geographical areas, focusing on four key innovation areas: vertical coordination models, product quality certification, digital logistics, and finance innovations, along with global knowledge assessment. The approach to evaluating the initiative’s impact is based on a combination of theory-based methodologies, explicitly focusing on Process Tracing (PT) for the impact evaluation phase. The evaluation is designed to reflect on the success and learnings of the initiative while strengthening CGIAR’s practice of theory-based methods such as PT and integrating innovative techniques like “causal hotspots” and Outcome Harvesting for more nuanced analysis. At its core, this evaluation prioritizes and focuses on detailed case studies of selected innovation bundles. This distinctive feature allows for an in-depth analysis of significant outcomes within the initiative. The selection process is guided by the “causal hotspot” strategy for Contribution Analysis (CA) combined with Outcome Harvesting (OH), which helps identify key areas of impact prior to the PT application. The PT methodology is then rigorously applied to examine the plausibility of each innovation’s contributions and the strength of supporting evidence. This provides valuable insights to scaling efforts and evidence-based decision-making.

Uganda coffee agronomy training: Impact evaluation report

This report describes the methods and findings of a randomized controlled trial evaluating the impact of coffee agronomy training and phone-based advisory services on farmer practices and observed coffee yield. In-person training was provided in randomly selected villages over the course of two years by Hanns R. Neuman Stiftung (HRNS) and TechnoServe in two separate regions of Western Uganda encompassing six districts. Messages reinforcing this training were sent to a subset of farmers in villages where training was offered by Precision Development (PxD), and standalone messages were sent to a subset of farmers in villages where no training was offered. The program period spanned the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns, which significantly affected how training could be delivered and likely reduced its impact.