1 / 9

Impact evaluations: lessons from AFD’s experience

Impact evaluations: lessons from AFD’s experience. 4-5 October 2011. Phnom Penh SKY evaluation meeting. What are impact evaluations promises?. 1.1. Context: Increased concern for aid effectiveness (2005 Paris Declaration)

adlai
Download Presentation

Impact evaluations: lessons from AFD’s experience

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Impact evaluations: lessons from AFD’s experience 4-5 October 2011 Phnom Penh SKY evaluation meeting

  2. What are impact evaluations promises? 1.1 • Context: • Increased concern for aid effectiveness (2005 Paris Declaration) • Relative failure of academic literature on growth (and its relationship with aid) to inform aid delivery (2006 report by the Center for Global Development: “When will we ever learn”) • In response, impact evaluations were promoted to: • Provide robust evidence on the effect of development interventions on their beneficiaries… • … and hence finally learn on “what works and what doesn’t” Thus, impact evaluations aim at contributing to accountability and knowledge,towards effectiveness of (future) development interventions Impact evaluations: lessons from AFD’s experience

  3. The rise of the “evidence movement” 1.2 • Creation of the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3IE), Development Impact Evaluation Initiative (DIME, World Bank), etc. • Movement reinforced by the widely acclaimed example of the Progresa program in Mexico • Strong increase of the number of IE related to development interventions over the past 10 years • More than 800 completed or on-going studies (White, 2011) • Several methods exist, but RCTs have rapidly been considered as the most robust one Impact evaluations: lessons from AFD’s experience

  4. Impact evaluations at AFD 1.3 • Impact evaluations at AFD: a stepwise experience • Build in-house and AFD’s partners capacities on IE tools • Contribute to overall debate on development aid effectiveness and IE • Define a strategy towards the use of IE in AFD’s operations • Since 2003, AFD has completed or initiated 9 IE studies in various sectors and countries, using different methodologies • Two large scale experimental studies: • “Al Amana”: rural microcredit in Morocco • “SKY”: micro health insurance in Cambodia Impact evaluations: lessons from AFD’s experience

  5. Importance of the SKY evaluation from AFD perspective 1.4 • Change in French government strategy since 2004 (CICID) in the context of MDGs • Health and education sectors: top of the agenda • Several on-going projects of health-insurance: • Cambodia, Laos, Mali, Senegal, Cameroun, Madagascar, Mauritania • Little robust knowledge about effects of health insurance in developing countries • On-going debate about best interventions to (i) remove financial barriers to health protection whilst (ii) insuring sustainability • User fees, conditional-cash transfers, insurance, free services Impact evaluations: lessons from AFD’s experience

  6. Lessons learned: objective of accountability can be reached only under certain conditions 1.5 • Relative simple interventions (best if single-strand initiatives) • Difficulties if too many inputs (may be conflicting effects) • Interventions that have been already piloted in other areas / contexts → mature and stabilized interventions • If new services provided, take-up might be low (“compliance” problem) due to slow learning process • Evaluation conditions not too different from normal implementation conditions • Measured outcomes not too far in the causal chain • If far, statistically hard to detect an impact through the evaluation • Outcomes expected in the short-run • If not, problematic to maintain treatment / control groups (“spillovers” effects) Impact evaluations: lessons from AFD’s experience

  7. What resultsFor which utilization 1.6 Impact evaluations: lessons from AFD’s experience

  8. Lessons learned: objective of knowledge-production achieved 1.7 • Various interesting quantitative results • Examples • Opposable results (robust) • Coupled with qualitative approaches, IE programmes can provide great understanding of the mechanisms at stake • SKY example: economic impacts, health-care behavior, adverse selection effects, supply quality, etc. • Sub-product of these studies: make explicit the theory behind the intervention (“theory of change”), otherwise often hidden • Perspectives at AFD: • Carefully screen projects to be evaluated with IE tools • Innovative projects (test alternative options within interventions) • Promote a mixed-methods approach (qualitative / quantitative) Impact evaluations: lessons from AFD’s experience

  9. Thanksfor your attention http://www.afd.fr/home/recherche/evaluation-capitalisation/Evaluation-impacts

More Related