Increasingly, development funding is directed to programmes aiming to make market systems more favourable for smallholders and low-income consumers of food. The development outcomes of these programmes are not self-evident. Programmes operate in dynamic markets full of uncertainties and surprises and depend on many other factors not under their control.
Assessing whether a programme indeed contributed to development outcomes is challenging. Building on real-world experiences with theory-based evaluation in inclusive business programmes, this IDS Bulletin discusses approaches and methods for meaningful impact evaluation. It examines how these evaluations provided information that made programmes accountable to the donors while also helping the implementing agencies to learn and adapt their programmes.
In this IDS Bulletin, the authors discuss the experiences of practitioners and academics in finding doable and creative ways to conduct impact evaluations of inclusive business programmes in the domain of food and agriculture. Inclusive business programmes that work in the area of food and agriculture aim to change current business practices of small and medium enterprises in a way that these include smallholders as producers or target poor consumers as consumers.
The editors of this issue say, ‘Informative impact evaluations, going beyond a simple box-ticking exercise, are crucial for the learning of stakeholders who are working to develop new inclusive business models in food and agriculture.’
The examples show a convergence in methodological approaches, with ‘What works for whom under what conditions’ as the key learning question. All use a combination of methods that complement and build upon each other. However, smart data collection and sharp analysis and synthesis alone are not enough. The evaluation process and outputs also need to be informative for the stakeholders involved. More interaction and sense-making between implementers and evaluators are needed.
All experiences presented in this IDS Bulletin acknowledge that it is not easy to find ways to make learning useful for evaluation commissioners and implementing agencies. Under the right conditions, the presented approaches and tools might work and accelerate the learning loops for adaptive management. Crucially, three conditions appear as necessary for a good theory-based evaluation:
- having interested ‘listeners’ as the audience of the evaluation;
- applying rigour in anticipating and addressing validity threats to the conclusions;
- sufficient resources for an appropriate mix of methods.
About the editors
Giel Ton is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and Director of the Centre for Development Impact (CDI). He specialises in designing mixed-methods impact evaluations in private sector development programmes. He promotes contribution analysis as an overarching approach to theory-based evaluation. It is a stepwise process to identify the hotspots where additional data collection and reflection are needed. He has a special interest in the effectiveness of programmes that aim to improve governance and coordination in agricultural value chains and empower smallholder farmers in collective action.
Sietze Vellema is Associate Professor in the Knowledge, Technology and Innovation group at Wageningen University & Research, the Netherlands. He leads the action research and monitoring and evaluation of the 2SCALE programme at the Partnership Research Centre, based at the Rotterdam School of Management. Sietze is editor-in-chief of the interdisciplinary journal NJAS: Impact in Agricultural and Life Sciences. He is involved in integrative studies that aim to understand why and how different actors collaborate in solving organisational, managerial, and technical problems related to inclusive development and sustainable food provision, based on (action) research in Africa and Southeast Asia.
This issue of the IDS Bulletin is open access and can be read for free from the IDS Bulletin website.
About the IDS Bulletin
The IDS Bulletin is an open access, peer-reviewed journal focusing on international development. In continual publication since 1968, it has a well-established reputation for intellectually rigorous articles developed through learning partnerships on emerging and evolving development challenges presented in an accessible manner in themed issues that bridge academic, practice and policy discourse.
It has become one of the leading journals in its field through engaged scholarship between academics, donors, non-governmental organisations and policy actors worldwide, bringing together cutting-edge thinking, research and debate from the Institute of Development Studies community and its partner organisations. The IDS Bulletin aims to contribute to critical thinking on how transformations that reduce inequalities, accelerate sustainability and build more inclusive and secure societies can be realised.
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