“Impact assessment is
now an indispensable component of programs because stakeholders are demanding
demonstrable and measurable impacts,” says Dr Aliou Diagne, AfricaRice Program
Leader for Policy, Innovation Systems and Impact Assessment. “Donors are
increasingly requesting more evidence of net return from their investments.”
Resource scarcity
combined with questions relating to the social, economic and environmental
impact of publicly funded development projects increase the need for
well-documented impact-assessment studies. As a decision-making tool, such
studies improve the transparency, accountability and effectiveness of programs
and policies.
There is a shortage of
expertise for handling impact assessments in sub-Saharan Africa. According to Diagne,
the use of trained local experts has several advantages: they are familiar with
the local environment and are more likely to take local institutional issues into
account; they have a sense of ownership of the data collected and the analysis;
and they are in a better position to disseminate the results and provide follow-up
advice on their studies.
With the emphasis placed on poverty reduction, impact assessment
requires going beyond the usual adoption studies and estimation of internal
rates of return to research. Consequently, the emphasis is on providing information
on the ex-ante and ex-post impact of the AfricaRice- and national agricultural
research systems (NARS)-generated rice technologies on various household, community
welfare and environmental outcomes, including poverty, food security,
nutrition, health and biodiversity.
Overall
capacity is built through the development of individual and institutional
capacity of NARS in the region through training and joint implementation of impact
studies. AfricaRice has been organizing impact-assessment methodology courses
for the NARS partners regularly since 2002. More than 250 national agricultural
research scientists, university researchers, and students from 22 African
countries have participated in these annual training workshops.
AfricaRice
scientists have also backstopped NARS collaborators in the design and
implementation of their impact studies – in particular, questionnaires and programs
for statistical analysis were developed for studies in Côte d’Ivoire and
Guinea. The impact assessment unit of AfricaRice and its NARS collaborators have
been conducting baseline surveys on the adoption, impact and targeting of
NERICA rice varieties in 17 countries – Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central
Africa Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia,
Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo and Uganda.
