| When does rigorous impact evaluation make a difference? The case of the Millennium Villages |
| Authors: |
Michael A. Clemens and Gabriel Demombynes |
| Source: |
Journal of Development Effectiveness, Vol. 3, No. 3, September 2011, 305–339, DOI:10.1080/19439342.2011.587017 |
| Topic(s): |
Wealth Index
|
| Country: |
Africa
Ghana
Kenya
Nigeria
|
| Published: |
SEP 2011 |
| Abstract: |
When is the rigorous impact evaluation of development projects a luxury, and when
a necessity? The authors study one high-profile case: the Millennium Villages Project
(MVP), an experimental and intensive package intervention to spark sustained local
economic development in rural Africa. They illustrate the benefits of rigorous impact
evaluation in this setting by showing that estimates of the project’s effects depend heavily
on the evaluation method. Comparing trends at theMVP intervention sites in Kenya,
Ghana, and Nigeria with trends in the surrounding areas yields much more modest
estimates of the project’s effects than the before-versus-after comparisons published
thus far by the MVP. Neither approach constitutes a rigorous impact evaluation of the
MVP, which is impossible to perform due to weaknesses in the evaluation design of the
project’s initial phase. These weaknesses include the subjective choice of intervention
sites, the subjective choice of comparison sites, the lack of baseline data on comparison
sites, the small sample size, and the short time horizon. The authors describe one of
many ways that the next wave of the intervention could be designed to allow proper
evaluation of the MVP’s impact at little additional cost. |
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