Mainstreaming of biofortification in the African Union: Evaluation of CGIAR contributions to a policy outcome trajectory

Abstract

The evaluator would like to thank all those who contributed to this evaluation. This includes Amanda Wyatt and Claudio Proietti, who managed the evaluation process and provided invaluable support throughout. The evaluator would also like to thank the reviewers for fact checking and their views and insights that greatly improved the report. The final publication benefitted greatly from copyediting and design provided by Janet Hodur and Sarah Fernandes.

Outcome Trajectory Evaluation (OTE): An Approach to Tackle Research-for-Development’s Long-Causal-Chain Problem

“…In all four cases, it was useful to keep in mind that the outcome trajectory of interest was itself nested within broader outcome trajectories. For example, understanding the outcome trajectory, from which a draft declaration by the African Union supporting biofortification emerged, required us to also understand the broader outcome trajectory that led to the development and introduction of biofortified crops into Africa in the first place (Douthwaite, 2020a).…”

“…For the Tanzania case, the timeline allowed us to identify 13 cassava seed system-related outcomes from when the trajectory began in 2012 (Douthwaite, 2020b) such as the gazetting by the Government of Tanzania of Seeds (Amendment) Regulations for cassava, sweetpotato and potato in 2017. The time-ordering of events, the in-depth interviews and document review allowed us to identify if and how the CGIAR had contributed to them through various strategies, see Table 2.…”

“…A complete set of findings from the four cases can be found in the respective evaluation reports (Douthwaite, 2020a(Douthwaite, , 2020b(Douthwaite, , 2020c(Douthwaite, & 2020d and the synthesis paper (Douthwaite, 2020e). For example, the synthesis report found that the way that the CGIAR contributed to the four policy-related outcomes was by being a major participant and contributor to the four outcome trajectories from which the respective case outcomes emerged.…”

“…We conducted the four case evaluations sequentially, beginning with the case study where participants had worked more explicitly and for longer on influencing policy (i.e., mainstreaming of biofortification in the African Union). The four evaluations were reviewed by participants and published (Douthwaite, 2020a(Douthwaite, , 2020b(Douthwaite, , 2020c(Douthwaite, & 2020d.…”

“…The cases showed that by starting with a significant outcome, and describing the OT that produced it, causal analysis automatically began at the OT's origins, however far back that was. For example, the Tanzania OT timeline (Douthwaite, 2020b) showed that it began in the late 1990s with a USAID-funded project that developed a quality management protocol for producing and distributing clean cassava seed. This idea was picked up in 2007 with the establishment of the Great Lakes Cassava Initiative (GLCI) that ran until 2012, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), which distributed clean cassava seed to 1.15 million farmers in Central and East Africa, including Tanzania.…”