Mid-term & final evaluation of a project to strengthen resilience to climate shocks in Kenya

Title Sustainable Agroecology Models of Production for ASAL of Kenya – SAMPAK

Location Isiolo County, Kenya

Duration 2019 -2022

Project leader Action Aid Italy

Partner Action Aid Kenya, MID-P, CESVI

Funding Italian Agency for Cooperation and Development – AICS

Context 

Climate change and increasing volatility of rainfalls have strong repercussions in some areas of Kenya, especially those classified as Arid and Semi-Arid Zones (ASAL). In the Isiolo County, for example, every 2-3 years violent droughts seriously damage agro-pastoral activities which are the main source of income for 80% of the local population.

Climate shocks, the reduction of the breeding, the growing competition for natural resources, in particular water and land, have caused heavy conflicts between the communities and put a strain on the resilience capacity of the local population.

The project SAMPAK aims at strengthening the resilience of 10 local communities in Isiolo County through three main modes of action:

  • ♦ Improvement of access to natural resources (land and water)
  • ♦ Incentive to the diversification of productive activities and introduction of sustainable agricultural practices
  • ♦ Planning for collective management of natural resources

General Objective

The mid-term evaluation, carried out by ARCO Researchers after the first 18 months of the project, intends to verify the level of accomplishment of the planned activities and to assess its progress towards expected results. The mid-term evaluation will focus in particular on the agro-ecological diversification of livelihoods, the management of natural resources and the ability of communities to plan the use of shared resources and to establish networks between them.

A final evaluation will be carried out two years after the end of the project to verify whether the objectives of the project SAMPAK have been achieved with particular attention to strengthening the resilience of local communities and increasing food security of the target population.

Our contribution

To carry out the mid-term and final evaluation, ARCO Researchers will use, and adapt to the need of the evaluation, the RIMA-II approach developed by FAO aimed at measuring the resilience of communities. Thanks to the development of a Resilience Capacity Index it will be possible to measure and monitor the resilience of the 10 communities involved.

ARCO Researchers elaborated data collection tools, supervised their conversion into electronic format – since data collection will take place on tablets – they will train interviewers, support them in data collection and will as well carry out the quantitative and qualitative analysis.

The questionnaire, the sampling strategy and the workplan for data collection have been developed in close collaboration with the staff of ActionAid Kenya with the aim of giving the organization a toolbox that can be used in the future for other evaluations, in phase of monitoring or need assessment.

Read more on our M&E and Impact Evaluation Unit