Covid-19 Response Fund for Agri-Transition in India
The service rendered for this program included the rollout of an impact measurement process for the Guarantee Fund set up by Rabo Foundation, Shell Foundation, and Ikea Foundation with U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (USDFC) as guarantee issuer of USD 27.5 million. The project entailed data collection on prescribed fields to capacitate the three lenders (Samunnati, Avanti, and Maanaveeya) to disburse loans to risky credit enterprises that facilitated agri-transition for smallholder farmers.
Consequently, it was expected that the lenders would leverage additional capital from other financial institutions for both lenders and borrowers. The transition towards viable and sustainable smallholder agriculture was expected to be achieved through investment in four asset classes: Food Loss, Renewable energy, Agriculture Technology, and Farmer Producer Organisations. The guarantee fund’s duration was eight years.
The Monitoring, Learning, and Evaluation (MLE) framework used a cross-sectional design with a mixed methods approach to assess the program’s success and impact. The impact measurement was divided into three tasks:
- Creating a Theory of Change (ToC) and outcomes measurement framework at the fund level for each lender
- Defining the outcomes measurement framework; defining the indicators to be measured across the stakeholders- lenders, borrowers, and farmers with periodic monitoring; collecting data on a semi-annual basis
- Learning promotion through knowledge sharing in workshops, revisiting ToC, and promoting best practices was done annually