Overview

The IFAD funded project entitled "Impact Evaluation Approaches for Collaborative Agricultural Research & Development" will help enable agricultural research and development organizations working in developing countries to improve their evaluation practices and to assess a wider range of positive or negative impacts and their causes. Specific objectives are to:

- Increase knowledge and understanding of the dynamics and contributing factors that lead to poverty reduction, improved livelihoods and environmental sustainability in rural agricultural production systems by conducting exemplary new impact evaluations, providing new insights particularly on the multi-stakeholder partnership dimensions of research.
- Develop capacity amongst researchers and evaluators within agricultural research organizations for evaluating the impact of agricultural research for development programmes and supporting the use of evidence from evaluation for policy and practice.

An agreeement with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in Australia was signed and Dr. Patricia Rogers will assist ILAC in developing this project. The activities related to this project are as following:

Compile and synthesize existing impact evaluations of agricultural research for development
Develop an on-line resource portal to aid agricultural research for development evaluation practitioners to select and apply methods that are appropriate to the type of programme, evaluation questions, and other contextual variables.
Conduct exemplary new impact evaluations of agricultural research for development programmes and synthesize the results.
Provide training, mentoring and technical support on impact evaluation approaches to evaluators and researchers in agricultural research for development organizations.
Advocate for better evaluation policies and practices in agricultural research for development organizations by targeting policy makers and donors with information to inform policy and practice.

As part of the project outputs, an online resource is under development and will be announced shortly.

Relevant documents related to this project are attached below, inlcusive the full proposal submitted to IFAD.