The World Bank’s Development Impact Evaluation team, the European Union (EU) and Rwanda’s Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI) are working to promote evidence-driven agricultural policy-making in Rwanda. The World Bank-MINAGRI-EU partnership seeks to increase the use of high-quality data and evidence in the agricultural sector, from policy design to implementation, and scale up/down decisions. The impact evaluations conducted under this partnership respond to MINAGRI’s strategy. As such, the partnership offers a flexible instrument to accumulate learning to increase program impact and to adapt to emerging needs. In addition to supporting rigorous evaluations, the partnership also aims to build sector-wide capacity in using, designing, and implementing impact evaluations.
Towards this end, the partnership worked with the University of Rwanda (UR) to deliver the Impact Evaluation Summer School at the University’s Huye Campus from August 13-22. The program was attended by 37 Masters and PhD students from across UR’s campuses. The course was fully funded for all students, through the support of the EU, and was delivered by World Bank - DIME staff and research partners from the University of California, Berkeley. It included lectures, group discussions and lab-work developed to build students’ knowledge of the impact evaluation toolbox.