Supporting adaptive management of DeSIRA projects and developing a global monitoring of the DeSIRA Initiative to improve impacts towards the SDGs

Supporting adaptive management of DeSIRA projects and developing a global monitoring of the DeSIRA Initiative to improve impacts towards the SDGs



On Friday 3rd December 2021, two webinars were held to inform DeSIRA grantholders and partners

about the ongoing work of DeSIRA-LIFT and ASRAFS in support of the Monitoring, Evaluation &

Learning (MEL) activities under the DeSIRA Initiative. The objectives of the webinar were to present

and discuss:

• The state of play of the implementation of the DeSIRA Initiative and its future.
• The support available from DeSIRA-LIFT to strengthen adaptive management of DeSIRA projects through support to their monitoring, evaluation and learning systems.
• The development of a global monitoring system for the overall DeSIRA initiative, with the active participation of the DeSIRA projects.

KEY MESSAGES

The DeSIRA Initiative aims to foster innovation through research to contribute to the transformation

of sustainable agri-food systems in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). Monitoring, evaluation

and learning are essential ingredients to strengthen synergies and the impact of the DeSIRA Initiative.

Two facilities support this effort: DeSIRA-LIFT and ASRAFS.

DeSIRA-LIFT (contact: desira.lift@wur.nl)

DeSIRA-LIFT is a new facility implemented by Agrinatura and managed by EC Headquarters in Brussels (INTPA F3 –Sustainable agri-food systems and fisheries) that provides support services to the three pillars of the DeSIRA Initiative, in order to enhance the impact of the Initiative. During the webinar, in particular the available services for DeSIRA pillar 1 under DeSIRA-LIFT Service Area 1 were presented. These services include, amongst others, support to develop MEL capacities in the country-led DeSIRA projects and facilitate cross-project and peer learning. Based on the first e-survey results (launched in November 2021) indicating the MEL status of DeSIRA projects, projects (project leaders, MEL officers, and other relevant actors) were invited to engage in upcoming workshops, learning events and training activities to further strengthen their MEL capacities and embark on a coaching trajectory with other projects which will be grouped in thematic and geographic clusters, starting from early 2022 till May 2024. Participation will be voluntary and projects will have opportunities to express specific capacity development needs . Service Area 1, led by Aurélie Toillier (CIRAD; aurelie.toillier@cirad.fr) and Margarida Lima de Faria (ISA; margaridalf@isa.ulisboa.pt), is responsible for delivering and fine-tuning service support to country-led DeSIRA projects, while feeding a learning agenda agreed with DG INTPA on capacities needed to develop impactful research and innovation projects in diverse contexts. As from February 2022, DeSIRA-LIFT Service Area 1 will provide project leaders and MEL officers with information on their clusters and the dates of kick-off workshops for sharing their MEL challenges and successes and expressing their support needs from a menu of service offer. Meanwhile a digital platform will be developed for facilitating access to information about available support services and access to resources for project teams about MEL and adaptative management in research and innovation projects.

ASRAFS (contact: agriversal@yahoo.com)

The ASRAFS facility is implemented by GFA Consulting Group and managed by EC Headquarters (INTPA F3). Its services have been mobilised to develop a global monitoring & evaluation framework to monitor progress at meta level and steer the DeSIRA Initiative at the global level. This global monitoring & evaluation framework has been developed with a bottom-up approach, drawing on results and indicators in the existing logframes of DeSIRA projects. The overarching global framework will include a series of core indicators that reflect the results (and corresponding indicators) being tracked by the DeSIRA projects. The aim is to guide data collection at the meta level (based on indicator data as reported in projects’ annual progress reports) while minimizing any additional data collection efforts. The draft global framework will be piloted with 10 DeSIRA projects to assess its usefulness and applicability (the report will be available in April 2022). After this pilot, data will be collected for projects started in 2019 and 2020 It is important to note that the core indicators of the global framework do not replace the indicators in the project logframes, but if projects wish to align with or adopt some of the core indicators, they are encouraged to do so.