Also the second day of the DCED seminar was filled with presentations as well as a marketplace with group discussions. Here the highlights.
Results measurement in challenge funds
Day 2 of the seminar started with three presentations on a type of programme that has really taken off in the past years: challenge funds. The presentations dealt with one example from Africa and one from the Asia-Pacific region.
The Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF) was first presented by Hugh Scott. He argued that challenge funds can also achieve scale and systemic change. It is a challenge to make a grant given to a particular business have an impact in the wider market but there are ways to adapt a challenge fund, to influence it to make sure a wider systemic impact is achieved. Selecting the right projects is essential and in this process, commercial motivation and 'disruptive innovations' are key. You need a good sector understanding to be able to identify what investments can have a catalytic potential. AECF is also introducing new products like interest free loans and expanding into new sectors like adaptation to climate change.
David Smith from Triple Line continued the discussion with the challenges of measuring impact with challenge funds. He highlighted the importance of understanding the different interests of different stakeholders: don't ask business to measure impact on poverty reduction accurately! Taking into account their interests, determine who is going to measure what, and above all, keep it simple! It might be better to capture a few indicators well, rather than trying to measure all the possible results that can come out of the different funds. For measuring impact, longitudinal studies are important, also to analyze in depth changing markets.
Amanda Jupp then presented the experience of the Enterprise Challenge Fund for the Pacific and South East Asia and their journey to comply with the standard. From having one external monitoring specialist when they started in 2009, they now revised their results measurement system to comply with the standard. Projects have to be selected also based on their potential for systemic change and therefore several years are needed before system changes and scaling-up can be seen and measured. She also recalled the importance of not only collecting results, but also using them to adjust the project .
Experiences in value chain development and LED
After lunch, Ivan Rodriguez from PYMERURAL presented their experiences using the standard in their VC and LED project. They developed results chains not just per sector, as most projects do, but also by geographical territory. This has had many benefits, such as allowing them to consider in a given territory value chains that the project did not work with. Ivan also highlighted the importance of including the different stakeholder in this process, as local governments are now also adopting their processes and using it to readjust their priorities. It still remains a challenge to use results measurement to account for the impact of dialogue platforms and similar interventions.
Marketplace: group discussions
Participants had then the opportunity to debate a number of issues suggested by the participants themselves. Six main issues were discussed:
- Results Measurement in Business Environment reform: specific challenges and ways forward
- Can the standard be applied beyond Private Sector Development (e.g. skills development, health, etc.)? Experiences to date.
- The new approach of 'inclusive business' piloted by the Business Innovation Facility
- The links between log frames and results measurement and how to revise them, based on the experience of the Samriddhi project
- Capacities in market facilitation: what is left after projects end?
- Scaling-up the standard within organizations: how to take it to the next level?
Unfortunately there was no reporting back, so there is no summary of the discussions.
Managing for results in trade facilitation
Last for the day but not least, Donna Loveridge presented Trademark East Africa's efforts to comply with the DCED standard. Trademark is probably the only Business Environment Reform project that tries to apply the standards, although it is still at an early stage. On the website, you'll find a comprehensive write-up of the presentation, which describes very well the process, but also the main challenges they face and their strategies. Most noteworthy are their efforts to unpack the 'missing middle' and making the link between employment and income and trade reforms. Check it out!
In general, throughout today and yesterday, it seems many questions were asked around attribution (how do we do that?!) and about measuring employment, something all the projects seem to struggle with. Perhaps two topics that need deeper discussions in the future?
That was all for the day, stay tuned for tomorrow's update and interview of the day.
