Second in a series of blog posts exploring IFPRI Malawi’s engagement in the ‘Building Resilience and Adapting to Climate Change’ Programme in Malawi.
IFPRI is leading the impact evaluation of the DFID funded ‘Building Resilience and Adapting to Climate Change’ (BRACC) programme, which is currently implemented in Balaka, Chikwawa, Mangochi, and Phalombe districts. Combining a randomized control trial (RCT) approach with a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods, the evaluation will (1) estimate the effectiveness of BRACC in enabling households to smoothen consumption in the face of production shocks; (2) estimate the effectiveness of BRACC in increasing food security; and (3) establish whether BRACC interventions reduce extreme poverty.
As some BRACC-related programming is already ongoing in two of the target districts (Chikwawa and Mangochi), the impact evaluation will be limited to 224 communities in the remaining two districts – Balaka and Phalombe. Our researchers have randomly assigned 149 communities in the two districts to the intervention arm, which receive resilience building support. Another 75 communities were assigned to the control arm of the RCT, which will not receive resilience building. Researchers will estimate the impact of the programme by comparing changes in the two trial arms over the duration of BRACC.
After a four-day enumerator training, the baseline survey started in late August with a group of 48 enumerators organized into eight teams. Each of the 224 communities was visited by one of the teams, which first conducted a census of all households, and then interviewed the heads and spouses of fourteen households randomly selected from the census list. The interviews took on average two hours. Information on the village as a whole was gathered from community leaders such as chiefs, village development committee members, religious leaders or teachers in a group interview. The total sample thus includes 224 villages and 3,136 households.
The baseline survey, which was completed on October 10, was administered by Imani Consultants using electronic tablets equipped with Open Data Kit software. The data collected was encrypted and transmitted via an internet connection to IFPRI, where it was anonymized and stored in a password-protected cloud. The same households will be revisited during a midline survey in 2021 and an end-line survey in 2023. This way, BRACC can construct a panel data set containing key demographic and socioeconomic indicators such as household demographics, asset ownership, land ownership, land use, and productive activities. This will allow to follow the changing determinants of household resilience as well as main outcome indicators throughout the programme duration to establish the impact of the ‘Building Resilience and Adapting to Climate Change’ Programme.
