Major bilateral and multilateral organizations sign 3ie-led Global Evidence Commitment

Last week, during the high-profile IDB Knowledge Week, 3ie launched the Global Evidence Commitment, an opportunity for leading international development institutions – bilaterals, multilateral development banks, international NGOs, philanthropies – to come together to improve the culture and practice of evidence use in their institutions.

Latest blogs

Agricultural innovation: where does the evidence lie?

Safiya Husain, Diana Milena Lopez Avila 28 February 2018 blog

Improving agricultural innovations and technologies in developing countries is of paramount importance to increase agricultural production and income sustainability. Although many agricultural technologies are available, adoption remains low among smallholder farmers.

Third party monitoring in volatile environments – do the benefits outweigh the risks?

Marie Gaarder, Lauren Kelly 30 January 2018 blog

Writing on the What Work’s World Bank Group blogsite last July, Lauren Kelly and Marie Gaarder called for a “wide debate” about the important issues raised by the increasing trend of development agencies to use third parties to carry out monitoring, data collection and other work in fragile and conflicted-affected locations too risky for their own staff.

Promoting latrine use in rural India: what does the evidence say?

Shaon Lahiri 17 November 2017 blog

India is responsible for the majority of the world’s open defecation – a practice that spreads disease and cuts lives short. To address the issue, the Indian government’s Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM; Clean India Mission), which completes its third year, has been providing toilets, particularly in rural areas where they are most needed. SBM has also made explicit the importance of behaviour change and getting people to use those toilets.

Strengthening impact evaluation ecosystems by supporting local research teams

Benjamin DK Wood 26 October 2017 blog

Building a culture of evidence is a tall order, one that demands the engagement of different stakeholders committed to evidence-informed policy. While we embed capacity-building activities in our grant programmes, we continue to explore alternative approaches beyond our grants to increase local researchers’ familiarity with impact evaluation, so the pool of research centers able to provide impact evaluation services in a given country expands.

Reflections on the impact of agricultural certification on well-being

Daniel Phillips 03 October 2017 blog

Carlos Oya and colleagues recently published a systematic review of agricultural certification schemes that stands out for me as useful research for informing policy and programming. Why do I say that? Agricultural certification schemes set and monitor compliance to voluntary standards with the objective of making production socially sustainable and terms of trade fairer for smallholder farmers and workers.

Preparation meets opportunity: how 3ie’s stakeholder engagement paid off on HIV self-testing

Anna Heard 30 August 2017 blog

The last few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. What I know is that HIV self-testing has finally made it. At this year’s International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference on HIV Science there were an array of posters, oral abstract presentations and satellite sessions on research related to HIV self-testing.

How many scientific facts are there about science, technology, and innovation for development?

Annette Brown 31 March 2017 blog

In a recent blog post, Ronda Zelezny-Green and Alexandra Tyers claim “now scientific fact: mobile money can lift women out of poverty”. The scientific fact they cite comes from a new study [gated] published in Science by Tavneet Suri and William Jack. This study is an impact evaluation of M-PESA in Kenya using a quasi-experimental design, and it finds that increased access to M-PESA is associated with a decrease in poverty.

Not missing the woods for the trees: mapping evidence gaps on land use and forestry programmes

Birte Snilstveit, Jennifer Stevenson 21 March 2017 blog

Forest protection is among the most effective approaches we have to mitigate climate change. At the same time, agricultural land and forests provide food, livelihoods and fuel for billions of people globally, particularly in low and middle-income countries (L&MICs). At the same time there are concerns that large-scale forest protection programming will have negative knock-on effects on food security and other aspects of human well-being.

If you want your study included in a systematic review, this is what you should report

Birte Snilstveit 05 November 2016 blog

Impact evaluation evidence continues to accumulate, and policymakers need to understand the range of evidence, not just individual studies. Across all sectors of international development, systematic reviews and meta-analysis (the statistical analysis used in many systematic reviews) are increasingly used to synthesise the evidence on the effects of programmes.

What did I learn about the demand for impact evaluations at the What Works Global Summit?

Emmanuel Jimenez 14 October 2016 blog

At the recently concluded What Works Global Summit (WWGS) which 3ie co-sponsored, a significant number of the sessions featured presentations on new impact evaluations and systematic reviews. WWGS was a perfect opportunity to learn lessons about the demand for and supply of high-quality evidence for decision-making because it brought together a diverse set of stakeholders. There were donors, knowledge intermediaries, policymakers, programme managers, researchers and service providers. They came from both developed as well as developing countries.

About

Evidence Matters is 3ie’s blog. It primarily features contributions from staff and board members. Guest blogs are by invitation.

3ie publishes blogs in the form received from the authors. Any errors or omissions are the sole responsibility of the authors. Views expressed are their own and do not represent the opinions of 3ie, its board of commissioners or supporters.