4 Impact assessment: Recommendations
Recognizing that they pay for the majority of impact assessment work, donors should:
4.1 Make access to grant capital conditional on the use of existing measurement and reporting standards, and align research design with the information needs, research budgets and absorption capacities of stakeholders.
4.2 Facilitate greater coordination in the agricultural investment sector to achieve better identification of research priorities.
4.3 Introduce the OECD-DAC Nutrition Policy Marker to support the systematic measurement of nutrition in all commercial agriculture programmes.*
4.4 Address the quality and availability of data, in particular the use of global standard measurement approaches for key metrics (such as jobs created or emissions mitigated), to enable aggregation and comparison across programmes.*
A key aspect underpinning the provision of concessional finance is the measurement of impact.
Read the report
The development impact of concessional finance to agri-business: A rapid evidence review [55 pages]
looks at the quality of analysis that impact investors produce to verify and validate the societal changes they claim to have generated from their investments.
Read the report
Commercial agriculture portfolio review 2022 [100 pages] and its executive summary [4 pages] reviews the performance of programmes in FCDO’s Commercial Agriculture Portfolio against 20 general indicators (related to overall reach, productivity, improved income, enterprises, and employment) and thematic indicators related to climate change, women’s economic empowerment, and nutrition.
Updated June 2023
* The CAPR is specific to FCDO but these issues are applicable to many donors
Summary of recommendations for donors