Evaluation of the Dutch Food Security programme in Bangladesh

Objectives

The evaluation of the Dutch food security (FS) country programme in Bangladesh is one of four IOB-commissioned impact evaluations. It consists of:

• an impact evaluation of the Dutch food security country programme; and
• an impact evaluation of selected food security projects
• with household level effects, one being the Safal project which is focused at value chain development, the other being the Blue Gold project which looks at the interaction between water management and agricultural value chain development.

The overarching research question for the impact evaluation study of the food security programme in Bangladesh is: what has been the contribution of the Dutch food security programme to the food security situation in Bangladesh? Following are the more specific evaluation questions:

1. What is the composition and motivation for the Dutch food security country programme 2012-2015?
2. What instruments are used and what is the synergy in tackling food insecurity?
3. What are the effects of a) the Dutch country programme, and b) the selected project, on food security?
4. How does the expenditure relate to the number of directly and indirectly targeted beneficiaries and to the expected food security effect per beneficiary?
5. What can be said about the efficiency or cost-effectiveness of the food security interventions?

Phases and deliverables

This impact evaluation knows three distinct phases with related deliverables, as follows:

• Inception phase and inception report, with the main purpose to acquire inputs to be able to plan the subsequent phases of the impact evaluation.
• Baseline phase with resulting baseline report, consisting of two parts: (i) country programme baseline and (ii) project survey baseline (survey in April 2014).
• Endline phase with resulting final report taking into account the baseline and impact phase surveys and findings, again consisting of above two parts (survey in April 2016).

Selected projects

The impact evaluation distinguished three levels of intensity (or approaches) in evaluating the Dutch food security and relevant water related projects in order to realize the set objectives (see table below):

• Level A: Detailed household surveys and focus group discussions for two pre-selected projects: Safal and Blue Gold, as well as detailed analysis of project progress and monitoring reports and interviews with project staff.
• Level B: Detailed analysis of four projects including review of progress and monitoring reports and interviews with project staff, being Profitable Opportunities for Food Security (PROOFS), Char development and resettlement project (CDSP IV), Improving Food Safety in Bangladesh (by FAO), and Scaling up rice fortification (by WFP).
• Level C: Screening of the main findings of three other relevant projects, all funded by the water budget and with relevant food security objectives, being: Crop water management (by FAO), Market Infrastructure Devt. Charland Regions (MIDPCR), South-West area integrated water resource (SWAIWRPMP).

Read the full report:

Evaluation of the Dutch Food Security Programme Bangladesh

Evaluation of the Dutch Food Security Programme Bangladesh – Annex 3A

Evaluation of the Dutch Food Security Programme Bangladesh – Annex 3B

Evaluation of the Dutch Food Security Programme Bangladesh – Annex 3C