The impact evaluation of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program Private Sector Window Malawi Evaluation Baseline (GAFSP PRSW) Malawi Evaluation Baseline project followed a quasi-experimental design including quantitative as well as qualitative aspects. This evaluation was a collaboration between IPOR and the Center for Evaluation and Development (C4ED) with funding from the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

The evaluation’s questions aimed at measuring the project’s impact on the productivity of Macadamia farmers and the livelihood of farming households. There were four main evaluation questions:

·         How did the project affect yields and farmer household income?

·         What was the project’s impact on poverty?

·         What was the project’s impact on food security and nutrition?

·         What was the project’s impact on women’s status and empowerment?

The goal of the Evaluation was twofold: to evaluate the IFC investment (support to the Macadamia outgrower program) and the Advisory Services (AS) component. For the AS component, the quantitative evaluation focused on the financial literacy training provided to program beneficiaries.

Data was collected through a survey that was administered to households of smallholder Macadamia farmers, focus group discussions with program beneficiaries, and key informant interviews with community leaders, field instructors and extension service officers. IPOR’s role on the Baseline Evaluation comprised contributions towards the development the study’s tools, translation of the study tools, obtaining of ethical clearance, recruitment and training of Research Assistants, and data collection and cleaning. The Baseline Evaluation was conducted in July and August of 2019 in the two districts where the GAFSP PRSW project was implemented: Thyolo district in Southern Malawi and Mzimba district in Northern Malawi.