Recently, two studies supported by the MRR Innovation Lab have measured the impact of agricultural interventions after their end. One, in Bangladesh, is structured as a traditional ex-post evaluation that measures the impact of a program that was designed with a randomly selected treatment group. The other, in Uganda, takes a novel approach in measuring the effect of program end on groups randomly selected for phaseout.
On February 27 and 28, 2024, the MRR Innovation Lab hosted the Behavioral Economics Forum: Lessons to Strengthen Development Programming and Policy. Local participants convened at USAID offices in Washington, D.C., joined by over 120 online participants from around the world.
This profile of the Rural Digital Literacy (RDL) project, led by the University of Ilorin under the ALL-IN initiative, discusses strategies the research team is using to maximize participation and learning outcomes.
“Of course, academic research can be theoretical - and theoretical research is quite important. But it is often conducted closely alongside interventions, intimately involved with on-the-ground dynamics, and brings significant value to local actors. This is something we see across the MRR Lab portfolio.”
Managing Director of Life & Agricultural Insurance, Israel Muchena shares Hollard Mozambique’s story of building an agricultural index insurance offering. A research team from the MRR Lab collaborated with Hollard to develop components of a successful product—from reaching last-mile customers through agrodealers to bundling the insurance with drought-tolerant seeds.
Sumayya Hassan is CEO of Takaful Insurance of Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. In this Q&A, she discusses how theory and practice come together with two-way knowledge sharing in her company’s longstanding partnership with MRR Lab researchers. Impacts she credits to the partnership include expanded market reach, improved risk management, and enhanced brand image.
The MRR Lab project, Subsidizing Learning About Resilience-building Agricultural Technologies in Mozambique tests how learning supports sustained adoption of a resilience-building bundle of drought-tolerant maize seeds and index insurance. Although men tend to be the primary decision makers around crop choice and inputs, women’s role in providing agricultural labor makes their buy-in important to the decision to adopt.
On December 10, the MRR Innovation Lab co-led a session at Resilience Hub at COP28 in Dubai. The event was entitled “Supporting Innovation to Build Food System Resilience Across Landscapes and Waterscapes.” Speakers included:
MRR Innovation Lab researchers recently held a 2-day event in Kigali, Rwanda, with 40 participants from various agricultural agencies and NGOs. The event included a training on research methods and presentation of project findings to date.
ALL-IN Principal Investigator Professor Peter Njiforti of Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria presented his ongoing research: “Enhancing Financial Inclusion through Mutual Weather Insurance: A Randomized Experiment.”