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Evaluation of the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security’s Role in Global Leadership

Country

Global

Region

Global

Type

Year

2023

Keywords:

Evaluation of the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security's Role in Global Leadership
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This Evaluation Report was produced for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). It was prepared independently by Cynthia Clapp-Wincek (evaluation team leader), Nicola Giordano, John Akwetey, Peter Simpson, Micah Frumkin, and the Institute for Development Impact for the USAID Monitoring, Evaluation, and Training Services Activity. The contents are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.

The authors wish to acknowledge the following individuals for their kind support and contributions to this evaluation: Anupa Deshpande from USAID/RFS who not only decided to undertake this evaluation of the Functional Strategy, but for her amazing work in co-creation and shepherding the evaluation throughout the process; Alice Riedel and Andrew Sheridan from USAID/RFS for their support throughout the evaluation; Grace Vottero from I4DI for her critical assistance in the final stages of producing the report; and Micah Frumkin from I4DI who went beyond being a team member, providing support and guidance to the entire team. The authors appreciate the willingness of the many individuals, particularly from RFS, who interacted with the team and served as respondents for their time and thoughtfulness at this challenging time.

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Evaluation of the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security’s Role in Global Leadership

Country

Global

Region

Global

Type

Evaluation Report

Year

2023

Abstract:

In July 2020, the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security (RFS) launched a Functional Strategy to articulate how the Bureau contributes to the achievement of existing U.S. Government strategies or policies within its mandate. The strategy named Global Leaderships to “strengthen the global environment for achieving inclusive agriculture-led growth, resilience, nutrition, and water security, sanitation, and hygiene” as a main objective of its functions. Two years later, RFS requested an external evaluation of the Bureau’s systems, processes, capacities, and resources helping or hindering its global leadership efforts. The purpose of this evaluation was to identify and analyze how RFS can better define and communicate its role in providing global leadership. As the World was struggling with drought particularly in the Horn of Africa and the COVID pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 focused the Bureau on the global food crisis. As a result, the scope of work for the evaluation narrowed to global leadership influencing “the global food security agenda and advancing food security for all” but in the context of these multiple crises.

Description:

The evaluation was not assessing the Bureau’s performance in global leadership but analyzing what led to performance. Therefore, the evaluation used eight cases in which the Bureau reported its global leadership to have influenced outcomes that contributed to changes in the global environment that led to shared development agendas and behaviors of bilateral and multilateral donors, non-governmental actors and private sector entities. Taking an Outcome Harvesting approach, the evidence from the outcome cases led the team to conclude that global leadership outcomes were strongest when all three types of leadership that emerged from the analysis were applied: technical leadership, relationship leadership and financial leadership. Although strongest when all types of leadership were combined to influence an outcome, the evaluation identified cases in which each type of leadership was able to have influence on its own. RFS has achieved significant outcomes through global leadership with a modest investment in the function. The Bureau must balance the expectations with the resources and decide priority actions and events in that context.

Keywords:

Evidence and Intelligence
Global Sustainability

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