E-Agriculture

Week 1 - Forum discussion summary

Week 1 - Forum discussion summary

Dear friends,

The first week of our forum focused on the methodological aspects of impact assessment in the light of the following questions -

  • What is the most effective way to measure the impact of ICT for development (ICT4D) initiatives?
  • Do you explicitly construct logical and linear paths for your programmes?
  • Do you carry out regular monitoring during projects, or do you prefer ex post facto studies?

The following themes emerged as responses to these questions from the e-agriculture community.

The forum had a divided opinion regarding having a universal set of indicators or some sort of an ICT impact indicator index for agriculture. While it may be useful to agree across a basic general list of indicators to be able to have a comparative approach to different agricultural projects based on ICT initiatives, the very different objectives of such projects could make it complex or unrealistic to have common set of indicators for all and any ICT in agriculture project.

The objectives of impact assessment indicators came up as a consequence of this discussion. Some expressed the key objectives for impact assessment are to enable donors and public to better understand results of projects interventions and for other organisations to adopt similar approaches tailor-made to local context. On the other hand, some preferred to extend the use of indicators beyond the ICT ones only (service market adoption, penetration or new services offer, users satisfactions with ICT services etc) to know exactly how and why true changes are taking place in the lives of the poor.

This led to the emergence of another issue of evaluating the importance of qualitative aspects of impact assessment. Techniques such as stories, short videos, field visits, immersions in the communities etc. can be used to complement number based approach to ICT impact assessment. A key challenge is how to convey donors of a handful of success stories, videos etc. where impact assessment based on hard indicators i.e. numbers, are used to convey outreach which is one of the key indicators of value for money of donor investment.

Carrying out regular monitoring during projects is a better option as it allows flexibility in terms of adjusting parameters keeping in view the current context. Although log-frames are widely in practice as a key tool to assess impact of ICT initiatives, it cannot be and should not be relied on as the one and only approach. Increasing preference is noticed towards the use of logical results chains which allow more flexibility in terms of tracking non-linear impact at activity level and the ability to modify intervention parameters during its course, if suggested by the data generated from the market system and target beneficiaries.