Intercooperation is getting more profiled in impact and evaluation studies

Lately Intercooperation has been mandated to implement several impact studies or programme evaluations on behalf of SDC, EFSE, GTZ and ICIPE. Intercooperation’s large experience and competences in terms of survey methodologies, data collection and analysis makes IC a strong player on the impact studies market.

In Kenya, IC elaborated the “Impact Assessment of Push-Pull Technology developed and promoted by ICIPE and partners in Eastern Africa” to capture farmers’ perception on the biological control technology of maize stemborer and parasitic Striga weed. ICIPE promoted the PPT over the last 16 years with an outreach of 25’000 farmers in East Africa. The assessment entailed a peer-review mechanism whereby trained farmers assessed other farmers through a facilitated process. Complementary information was generated

by consultation of key research, extension and donor organizations. Key questions addressed related to adoption, effect and impact, technology adaptation by farmers, the contribution of research and extension to adoption and impact, and future orientations

for up-scaling and policy. The study details the key success factors for the adoption of PPT, the benefits and the policy implication. Finally it gives recommendations towards the further scaling-up and dissemination of this widely recognized technology.

The Postcosecha Programme in Central America was initiated in 1980 by SDC in Honduras and subsequently expanded to Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. It aimed at improving food security and livelihoods of farmers by the introduction of metal silos for preserving the crop. Direct support by SDC ended in 2003 but the Postcosecha programme is carried on successfully by national entities. SDC has mandated Intercooperation to proceed to a 5 year ex-post impact study of the Postcosecha programme with a double objective: to provide facts and explanations for accountability purposes, and to identify key information for organizational learning in order to promote the approach elsewhere, notably Haiti, Andes, East and Southern Africa.

The ex-post impact study is combining several methods to verify existing data and to assess the impact of the programme such as the establishment of an inventory of existing documents/data, the verification of reliability of existing data,

the implementation of a survey in 4 countries at different levels: farmers, tinsmiths, key institutional informants and interviews with key experts and institutions to assess the factors of success/failures of the Postcosecha intervention model. The study is ongoing and will be finalized in springs 2010.

Intercooperation has been mandated by the European Fund for South East Europe (EFSE) to perform its Development Impact Study 2009 on Agricultural Finance in Moldova, Kosovo and Albania. The study started in the fourth quarter of 2009 with a desk study on the three countries and the six microfinance institutions which have been selected by EFSE for the impact evaluation. The desk study was followed by a field assignment of two international consultants, together with local consulting companies. During the field assignment, the international consultants have interviewed staff of the evaluated microfinance institutions, as well as key stakeholders of the financial market, and trained the local consulting companies to perform the household survey. In each country, 220 households (80 clients of each institutions and a control group of 60 non clients) have been interviewed. The final report of this study will be available in April 2010. In this endeavour Intercooperation is collaborating with the Dutch company MDF.

In 2009, Intercooperation has been mandated by the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and the German Development Service (DED) to do the independent interim evaluation of their common project “Support to Microfinance Services in Rural Areas” in Tajikistan. All independent evaluators mandated by the GTZ participate in a one day training on GTZ’s methodology for independent project evaluations, which follows the five DAC criteria of relevance, effectiveness, impact, efficiency and sustainability. Two financial sector development specialists of Intercooperation have participated in the course and performed the evaluation in Tajikistan. Since 2007, the GTZ mandates every year independent evaluations of its projects, after selecting a topic and a random sample of projects all over the world. Intercooperation has already participated in GTZ’s evaluations, in 2007 on private sector development in Kirgistan and in 2008 on local governance in Georgia and the Philippines.

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