Lesson Learned

During a project re-scoping, the program logic, economic analysis, potential beneficiaries, and evaluation plan should be re-assessed in a cohesive way by a coordinated project team.

During a project re-scoping, the program logic, economic analysis, potential beneficiaries, and evaluation plan should be re-assessed in a cohesive way by a coordinated project team. The Irrigation Infrastructure Activity was re-scoped; however, the other complementary activities were not assessed in the same way at the same time. This contributed to a disjointed project during implementation and may be one of the reasons for the lack of impact. In addition, the re-scoping economic analysis, on which the design of the evaluation was based, may have been overly optimistic about the behavioral changes that would occur from the project. An integrated, cross-sectoral review of the economic analysis may have resulted in more realistic assumptions of behavioral changes.

MCC has addressed this lesson in MCC’s policy on compact modifications, which requires that the team economist review any potential change in scope to assess its impact on the expected economic benefits and beneficiaries.