Evaluations should focus on the key program objectives rather than a component where it is feasible to implement an impact evaluation. In early compacts, the evaluations focused on impact evaluations and hence formalization of land rights was measured. In Ghana’s case, a prime objective of Land Tenure Facilitation (LTF) was complimenting the agriculture project by improving the ability to access land for cultivation with a secondary goal around improving tenure and related agricultural productivity of existing land users. The evaluation, however, focused on the strengthening land tenure via land formalization side and related benefit streams, like agricultural productivity, without a focus on the project’s prime objective under the Compact. Understanding existing land tenure rights is key for the land administration agency to make effective land allocation decisions, but the provision of land certificates and strengthening agriculture investments and productivity of existing households was not the project’s original objective of improving access to land.
Although the evaluation was informative on effects of LTF on labor and agricultural productivity, it did not provide an understanding of whether the program reached its original goal. The evaluation research questions, data sources and analysis did not assess changes in access to land. Part of this was due to MCC policy at the time which largely focused on where impact evaluation was possible. Now MCC reviews the entire set of programs and their results. In current cases like Indonesia’s Participatory Land Use Planning Activity under the Green Prosperity Project, MCC has restructured evaluations in coordination with the independent evaluator to not only look at village level and household effects but to also look at the big picture for changes in land use planning and administration of land use rights.