Research for Evidence – International Centre for Evaluation and Development: ICED

Category: Research for Evidence

December 26, 2022

Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Horticulture

Background

The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Horticulture at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) has collaborated with the International Centre for Evaluation and Development (ICED) to establish the East Africa Horticulture Regional Hub. ICED’s Nairobi Office serves as the office of the East Africa Horticulture Regional Hub. The Innovation Lab’s global research network advances fruit and vegetable innovations, empowering smallholder farmers to earn more income while better nourishing their communities. The program is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and led by a team based at University of California, Davis, as part of the U.S. government’s Feed the Future initiative.

Within the next four years, the Horticulture Innovation Lab is focusing its efforts on the East Africa region with the aim to implement a locally led, globally supported program that will produce systemic, sustainable, and inclusive improvements in the horticulture sector. Despite, East Africa region having favourable climate, the great potential of horticulture sector remains unrealized due to several challenges along the value chain. Alongside the constraints, there exists unexplored opportunities for inclusive growth for all actors such as women and the youth in the sector. Identification and prioritization of the challenges and opportunities by key stakeholders and practitioners in the horticulture value chain is critical for targeted interventions to achieve productive, efficient, sustainable, and inclusive growth of the horticulture sector in East Africa Regio.

Our Objectives

Promote projects in the East Africa region targeting small scale farmers that will tackle challenges and seize opportunities in the horticulture industry.
Coordinate and monitor projects within the region.
Facilitate the exchange of innovative ideas and technologies to contribute to practical and academic horticultural pursuits.
Develop capacity of local networks to equitably respond to regional needs.
Cultivate in-country networks including USAID mission relationships.

East Africa Horticulture Hub Research Priority

In May 2022, the feed the future Innovation Lab for Horticulture, East Africa Region Hub organized the first Consultative Workshop which brought together regional leaders, local horticulture experts, academia, private sector, the Lab consortium, and other relevant stakeholders with the intention to identify on-the-ground challenges and opportunities within the region. The consultative workshop explored avenues for addressing the identified challenges through research or capacity building activities. The consultative workshop was preceded by Desk review and key Informant Interviews with key stakeholders within the East Africa Region. This led to the development of East Africa Regional Horticulture Workshop report, which detailed the various challenges and opportunities within the horticulture sector. Click here to view the report.

In November 2022, the East Africa regional hub manager joined the other regional hub managers from West Africa, Central America and South Asia together with Lab management team and consortium partners in Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) in Florida, USA. The goal for this meeting was for each regional Hub to establish clear priorities and subthemes which informed the Request for Proposal (RFP) for projects spanning 2023 to 2026. The key research Priorities for East Africa are;

Pre-harvest and post-harvest management to reduce post-harvest losses
Enhanced marketing and market access of vegetables in the East Africa region.

This led to the development of the East Africa RFP titled: Transforming the horticulture sector in East Africa for better incomes and improved livelihoods for small scale farmers. Click here to view the RFA.

In March 2023, the Innovation Lab for Horticulture awarded 3 projects from the East Africa region. The awarded projects will be implemented by local organizations in Kenya and Uganda with the goal of empowering smallholder farmers to earn more income while better nourishing their communities.

East Africa Horticulture Management Team

East Africa Horticulture Advisory Board

East Africa Horticulture Hub Partners

Infrastructure’s Impact on Nutritious Diet and Women’s Economic Empowerment and Gender Equality

Capacity Strengthening

Capacity Strengthening & Professional Development

By admin

Research for Evidence

December 9, 2022

All-In Research

Feed the Future Advancing Local Leadership, Innovation and Networks (ALL-IN)

On May 12, 2020, at the University of California (UC) Davis, Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Markets, Risk and Resilience (MRR Innovation Lab) announced the award of a five-year research grant to the International Centre for Evaluation and Development (ICED) to lead the implementation of MRR Innovation Lab’s Advancing Local Leadership, Innovation and Networks (ALL IN) in Africa.

ALL IN is a new research program that aims to advance host country leadership in defining and implementing research projects and to deepen host country connections. The research will develop and test financial and market innovations that take the most promising agricultural tools for families in developing economies from the lab to the field.

ALL IN is designed to address capacity gaps among many research institutions in managing large and complex awards (particularly the unique complexities of managing the United States Agency for International Development awards). The program builds on the successes and draws on the strength of US-African research collaborations, but inverts the traditional model. ALL IN will call for researchers at African institutions to take the lead in defining priorities and will work with US university research partners to supplement their own skills, talents, and ideas.

Over the years, Feed the Future Innovation Labs has been built on partnerships between researchers at U.S. universities and researchers at host-country universities and institutions. Historically, these partnerships have been led, in both program administration and the ideas that drive the research, from the U.S. ALL IN will seek to shift this leadership role to researchers in Africa.

ICED Capacity to serve as Regional Hub for ALL-IN

ICED was established in 2016 to nurture leadership and innovation in impact evaluation for development by mobilizing the emergent capacity of African universities and research institutions. ICED is positioned to bridge the gap that can exist between the capacity of an innovative researcher to conduct high-quality research and the capacity of that researcher’s institution to manage a large and complex research project, allowing us to award significant funding to innovative host-country based researchers to lead a research project.

ICED currently have a memorandum of understandings (MOU) with research institutions in Africa such as the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research in the University of Ghana; the School of Graduate Studies, Research & Extension of the United States International University (USIU-Africa) in Nairobi, Kenya; The University of Nairobi Institute for Climate Change and Adaptation, Kenya, Nairobi; The School of Agricultural Economics and Business Studies, Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania; Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda; and The Ethiopian Economic Policy Research Institute, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. ICED has plans to widen the network to most of the research institutions in Africa.

ICED has also developed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with selected Africa country government ministries to promote research and evaluation for policy-making and action. ICED currently has MOU with the Ghana Government Ministry of Monitoring and Evaluation, The commissioner of M&E, office of the Prime Minister, Uganda, The State Ministry of Planning, Department of M&E, Kenya National Treasury and Planning, The Planning Commission, Malawi, and The Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, Puntland, State of Somalia.

ICED has been championing the evidence to action movement in Africa through its annual Evidence to Action conference (E2A) which has created an excellent platform for researchers, academics, private sector practitioners, development agencies, civil society and policy makers to learn, share information, build networks and partnerships with the overall objective of identifying effective strategies and interventions for ensuring data generated from research and evaluation projects is well utilized.

Therefore, as an African-based and African-led research institution, ICED is a natural choice to lead ALL IN based on its experience in nurturing leadership and innovation in impact evaluation for development and its ability to mobilize the emergent capacity of African universities and research institutions

ICED hopes that this research initiative and the innovations and interventions that emerge, will in turn boost the capacity of various African governments to design sound evidence-based policies that will cause positive development outcomes in the continent.

Project Team Members

David Sarfo Ameyaw

President, International Centre for Evaluation and Development (ICED)

- Co-Director, Feed the Future Advancing Local Leadership, Innovation and Networks (ALL-IN) | AMA Innovation Lab Advisory Board Member Emeritus

David Sarfo Ameyaw, a native of Ghana and a United States citizen, joined AGRA as the M&E Director on June 2011. He has worked in several other senior international management positions in Haiti, Ghana and other parts of Africa, Europe, Asia and South America. He brings over 20 years of international development work, with a focus on work in Africa. Ameyaw holds a D.Min in Missions and Community Development and a Masters in Divinity from Andrews University.

Michael R. Carter

Director, Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Markets, Risk and Resilience

- Distinguished Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics, UC Davis | Honorary Professor of Economics, University of Cape Town | Co-Director, Feed the Future Advancing Local Leadership, Innovation and Networks (ALL-IN) | ALL-IN Advisory Board Member

Michael R. Carter is a distinguished professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Davis and honorary professor of economics at the University of Cape Town. Carter directs the BASIS MRR Innovation Lab and the I4 Index Insurance Innovation Initiative. His research examines poverty dynamics and productive social safety nets, the impact of violence on aspirations and hope, small farm uptake of improved technologies, and features a suite of projects that design, pilot and evaluate index insurance contracts as mechanisms to alleviate chronic poverty. Carter is a fellow of NBER, BREAD and the American Agricultural Economics Association, and has served on advisory boards for numerous academic journals and international development NGOs. He is co-editor of The Economics of Poverty Traps (U. of Chicago, 2018).

Tara Chiu

Associate Director

MRR Innovation Lab

Tara Chiu provides administrative and strategic support for a wide portfolio of research projects focused on poverty, food security, improved technology adoption and risk management and resilience. This includes the Index Insurance Innovation Initiative (I4). She conducts high-impact outreach to integrate research findings for more effective, evidence-based public policy and development programming. She regularly consults on index insurance implementation and scaling for national governments and NGOs. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in The Gambia and holds a B.A. in Political Science from American University and a Master of Public Policy from Duke University.

Sarah Ameso

Coordinator

Sarah Ameso is the program M&E Specialist with ICED, she has extensive experience in M&E in both Emergency and Development context in a number of countries that include; Uganda, South Sudan, Malawi and Kenya among others. She has experience working within East Africa and in addition she has established a functional Community Response Mechanism before, by providing platforms where project stakeholders can give and receive feedback. She has demonstrated experience in working with teams in planning and implementing capacity building activities and projects in order to improve performance and accountability, foster knowledge sharing and learning to support the implementation of systems, policy and practice that enable evidence based programs with increased reach and impact. She has demonstrated ability to evaluate and implement best practices and processes affecting multiple technical specialties to achieve rapid, consistent and high quality outcomes has helped me to deliver on the highlighted areas.

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By admin

Research for Evidence

December 9, 2022

Infrastructure’s Impact on Nutritious Diet and Women’s Economic Empowerment and Gender Equality

Infrastructure’s Impact on Nutritious Diet and Women’s Economic Empowerment and Gender Equality

Lack of infrastructure emerged as a major challenge for agricultural development in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. It poses a great risk to livelihoods and threatens food and nutrition security, depriving people of access to healthy, affordable food, and quality nutrition and care. Yet we know that infrastructure fosters inclusive growth and maximizes positive impacts such as improved well-being, sustainable development and can contribute to the empowerment of women and girls.

When planned, delivered, and managed following a gender-inclusive and responsive approach, it can help to address gender-based barriers that impede access to services and reinforce structural inequities for women and girls at the household and market levels. Physical infrastructure such as roads, electricity, marketplace, and water supply systems play an important role in ensuring that low-income consumers have access to nutritious foods all year round. However, there is paucity of empirical evidence on the impact of infrastructure on improved diet and nutrition outcomes among low income consumers.

A few studies conducted in Uganda, Nepal, Ethiopia, and Ecuador have shown associations between the provision of roads, electricity, health, and transport infrastructure with outcomes such as food security, child growth, and anthropocentric measures. However, as far as we are aware, no studies have looked at causal impacts of large-scale infrastructure programs on outcomes surrounding affordability and accessibility of safe and nutritious foods.

It is in light of such evidence gaps that the International Center for Evaluation and Development (ICED), applied for and received a grant under the BMGF’s Nutritious Food Systems portfolio with the goal of identifying cost-effective, scalable, and inclusive ways to ensure the availability of safe, affordable and nutritious foods and diets year-round in sub-Saharan Africa that also contributes to women’s economic empowerment.