Facilitating Sustainable Impact
Development Impact (DevPact) works in pro-poor and private sector led development, specializing in market systems development (MSD), climate-smart agriculture (CSA), agricultural trade, programme design and monitoring, evaluation & learning (MEL). We identify points of leverage in market systems and value chains to facilitate inclusive and sustainable participation by marginalised rural households, women and youths. During and post implementation, we monitor and evaluate the impact, or lack thereof, of development programmes, providing actionable recommendations for adaptive management.
Our philosophy is that “permanent market actors” within the private and public sectors determine the sustainability of project interventions after the funding ends. In this vein, using an MSD lens ensures that we work with relevant private and public sector actors to facilitate systemic during the funding period of projects, to ensure that these activities continue after the projects end.
Sub-Saharan African countries face growing challenges from both climate related changes in temperature, and volatility in weather including increased likelihood of extreme events. In the absence of intervention, crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa are set to drop. The agricultural sector remains of vital importance for Africa’s growth and the livelihood of its population. In this context, a wide range of conservation agriculture, climate smart agriculture and climate finance programmes are being implemented in the region.
Africa faces recurrent challenges and low volumes of regional trade. An approach to regional trade facilitation based on improving competitiveness and working with the private sector aligns well with our MSD lens and is effective at unblocking bottlenecks to increased regional agricultural trade. Interventions focused on policy harmonization, trade facilitation and integration require private-public partnerships if they are to be successful and sustainable and we aim to achieve such partnerships in our work.
Adaptive management must be at the core of every development intervention, ensuring that project delivery teams have the data and insights to take corrective action as conditions within market systems change. Our approach supports the implementation of robust monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems to systematically track progress, gather extensive feedback from diverse stakeholders, and continually enhance programme delivery using data-driven insights. We develop evidence-based case studies, based on rigorous analytical approaches to showcase the impact, or lack thereof, of development interventions
Our work is rooted in detailed research and understating of agricultural value chains and market systems. Using the market systems development lens, we assist our development partners to better understand their sectors of operation through rigorous research and analysis. Through this, we identify pounts of leverage where the most impact can be achieved using minimal resources, providing value for money to our development partners.
Understanding the capacity needs of local level organizations, SMEs and farmer groups is critical to designing appropriate training and capacity building initiatives. We conduct organizational capacity needs assessments across agricultural value chains and work with grassroots organizations, farmer groups and vocational training colleges to develop tailored training and capacity building manuals and interventions to support effective project implementation. We have supported the design of climate smart agriculture training manuals for Governments in Southern Africa and the development of training of trainers manuals for extension officers in multiple countries in Africa.
Our Partners
