Many partners, big numbers? Estimating the extent of reach and use of innovations under the CGIAR Research Initiative – Diversification in East and Southern Africa

As resource envelops to fund international development activities become tighter, it is increasingly critical to demonstrate value for money. This is difficult for various reasons; chief among these is the failure to embed evaluation frameworks right from the start of projects. The multiplicity of scaling partners, and their interests and levels of involvement, makes it even more complicated to ensure consistent monitoring and evaluation. This paper develops and applies a replicable, population-based survey methodology based on computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) that can be used to assess the extent of reach, adoption and potential impacts of international development projects in contexts where baseline data are missing. We apply this method to the CGIAR Research Initiative – Diversification in East and Southern Africa, also known as Ukama Ustawi (UU) implemented with several scaling partners, across 12 countries in Eastern and Southern Africa: Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. This assessment was restricted to five countries only (Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe). The goal of the assessment was to measure the extent of reach and use of agricultural innovations promoted under UU across five project countries. We used quantitative primary data collected through CATI from a random sample of 6,445 rural people across 27 districts in five project intervention countries. The sample was randomly selected from all intervention districts using population-weighted sampling approaches to allow for inference to the population level within the sample districts. Awareness of technologies was notably high in Zimbabwe (97%), Zambia (65%), and Malawi (72%), although this did not translate to similarly high usage rates. For livestock-related practices, Kenya showed the highest awareness levels, with Zimbabwe following in second place. The study found a consistent gap between awareness and use of technologies across all countries. For instance, while 61% of the study population in Zimbabwe were aware of two-wheel tractors, only 10% used them. Similarly, despite high awareness of post-harvest technologies in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, usage rates remained lower at 59%, 21% and 19%, respectively. However, Ethiopia demonstrated lower awareness levels for minimum tillage and rotation/intercropping/mulching practices due to the shorter exposure period that Ethiopian districts received from UU interventions. Overall, approximately 1.05 million people (about 8.4%) out of the 12.5 million rural population in target districts were aware of UU activities, with Kenya and Zambia showing the highest awareness at 16%. Through various interventions and across the project sites in the five project target countries, a total of 164,363 people benefited from UU through using various innovations promoted by UU as of September 2024. Among these, 135,767 people or 82% were direct beneficiaries in districts where specific interventions were implemented and are users of unique interventions (i.e., without spillovers), whereas the higher number also represents people who benefitted from “spillover effects”. More than half of the beneficiaries (52%) were female and 56% were youth aged 18-35. These results demonstrate that UU exceeded the end of initiative outcome of 100,000 farmers by 36% without spillovers and 64% with spillovers, and the 40% women and 40% youth participation target by 12 – 16%. In terms of adoption of the promoted technologies, Zimbabwe showed the highest rates for minimum tillage and post-harvest mechanization technologies, closely followed by Malawi most likely due to a strong focus by the Government (e.g., the Pfumvudza program in Zimbabwe) and non-governmental organization partners promoting these technologies alongside UU. The study provides important insights into how international agricultural development initiatives can cost-effectively, measure their impacts and the extent of reach. The study also highlights the need for targeted approaches in project design and implementation to enhance technology adoption among smallholder farmers in East and Southern Africa. The success of the UU Initiative, particularly in countries like Malawi and Zimbabwe, provides valuable lessons on the need to build on from previous projects. This approach is a practical guide to future agricultural development programs in East and Southern Africa. The additional costs of nudging people to adopt technologies are lower in places where target innovations have been promoted before. Leveraging these advantages requires intentional efforts to build synergies and harmony to minimize conflicts, duplication and competition among development practitioners. National governments have a big role to play to actualize a harmonized approach to development facilitation by guiding where interventions are needed in the countries. Development practitioners too, need to do a better job to identify ongoing projects and find ways to build synergies. The methodology applied in this study can be easily replicated and applied in different settings. One potential improvement is to use cluster randomized sampling approaches and computing sampling weights at different clusters.