Knowledge Hub

The broad geographic focus and diversity of business models supported by the Fund are some of its greatest strengths, but also made the task of gathering evidence and evaluating impact a demanding assignment. The Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning component of the Fund, managed by Triple Line Consulting, tackled this challenge by creating bespoke frameworks to capture the full impact on Fund beneficiaries and their communities, implementing an intentional learning strategy to gather regular insights from participants, and carrying out a series of impact studies on a selection of participants. What are the learnings from this experience?

The foundation of the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) framework was the participant results management plan, which consists of a results chain (showing how the ] activities the Fund is supporting link to the outcomes and impact it has to measure) and development indicators which are reported against every six months. Together with regular site visits and check-in phone calls, this close engagement allowed a continual process of identifying emerging issues and insights – captured in our annual impact reports since 2018 available here.

As the Fund progressed, it started to become clear that the impacts were far broader than the original financial inclusion objective– beyond what the Fund was assessing through regular reporting. To understand this better, the MEL team developed a framework for assessing changes in the resilience of beneficiaries. This allowed the Fund to respond quickly to support its participants and their customers during COVID-19. The framework is currently used to assess the benefits of this support. As the Fund began to see the impacts spread into local communities and value chains, the MEL team also developed a methodology for assessing the indirect job creation potential of our partners, as seen in this learning paper.

Verifying and understanding the impact of a project can be a resource-intensive process, both for the participant and for the Fund. As such, the MEL team developed an approach to examine the impact of the Fund by conducting a series of in-depth impact studies on carefully selected participants where it was felt there would be value in unpacking the impact story. Drawing on beneficiary surveys (both during COVID-19 and afterwards) and site visits, the studies collected evidence on the impact of accessing participant products on incomes, indirect job creation and resilience.

Seven and a half years of implementation have generated many lessons, not just for the financial and agribusiness sector but also around how best to gather evidence, capture learning and disseminate key insights. Key among these is the importance of integrating MEL throughout the activities of the Fund. The Fund achieved this by having an intentional learning approach, with regular team meetings to share and discuss insights gathered through reporting and field visits. Together with dedicated research and impact assessment activities, this allowed the team not only to gather insights and learnings for the broader sector, but also to use these insights to improve the Fund, to design COVID-19 support activities and to implement a programme of technical assistance.

 By Timothy Hobden,

 Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning,

 Triple Line Consulting