Using ‘most significant change’ technique in Africa RISING project in Ethiopia

By Elias Damtew OnOctober 28, 2014 0 Comments

A number of lessons, success stories and even some negative change stories are expected to emerge from Africa RISING research-for-development interventions in the Ethiopian highlands. As part of our approach to monitor and evaluate the impact of Africa RISING innovation platforms, we plan to use the ‘Most Significant Change’ (MSC) technique in our monitoring and evaluation framework.
Higher level indicators from Feed the Future are being used as broad but key ‘domains of change’ to guide story collectors on the kinds of stories we seek. Monitoring and evaluation champions and International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) researchers and innovation platform technical group members are primarily responsible for tracking and documenting most significant change stories around the domains of change (see table below). In order to do this successfully, ILRI recently organized a training workshop for local partners which, among other topics, discussed how to collect the stories. Lessons were also drawn from previous ILRI experience in using this tool.

Domains of change	Stories can be developed around
Gender integration	Increased involvement of women in production and their input in production decision Improved access and/or control over key resources Improved income and/or control over use of income Leadership-speaking in public, group membership Time use- leisure vs. workload
Improved nutrition	Agricultural interventions that positively affected diet/nutrition Greater access to diverse, nutritious diet Behavioral change and awareness on nutrition services and information
Private sector engagement	Private enterprises participation in commercialization of technologies On formation of new private-public partnerships
Research and capacity building	Increased investment in research around agricultural productivity, food safety and nutrition and natural resource management interventions Improved investment in capacity building and enhanced capacity at farmer, individual, organizational and network levels
Climate smart development	Successful/promising natural resource management interventions/practices More efficient use of land, water, agricultural inputs

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