This document discusses socio-technical innovation bundles for transforming agri-food systems and the implications for impact assessment in One CGIAR and country-level experiences. It notes that historical evidence on yield-enhancing innovations reducing poverty is no longer relevant given new challenges requiring different innovation bundles. Rigorous impact studies are needed to understand effects in multiple domains and advise on scaling modalities. The document also highlights shining a light on CGIAR reach at the country level using data from Ethiopia, showing many innovations from different research domains have scaled but many have not reached large numbers of households or target populations.

1. Socio-Technical Innovation
Bundles for Agri-Food
Systems Transformation:
Implications for impact
assessment in One CGIAR &
country-level experience
Karen Macours
Paris School of Economics
INRAE
SPIA (Standing Panel on
Impact Assessment) CGIAR
karen.macours@psemail.eu
1

2. How to measure impact of AR4D with move to innovation
bundles for AFS transformation?
• Lots of Historical evidence on yield-enhancing innovations playing an
important role in reducing poverty …. and more, but with trade-offs
• Are those answers still relevant today?
– No, different innovations to respond to challenges of today’s world =>
innovation bundles (Barrett et al, 2020)
– Trade-offs and need to understand impacts in multiple domains =>
increase need for rigorous causal evidence
• New questions => Rigorous impact studies to advise on modalities for scaling
– E.g. with technology bundles, how to adapt scaling mechanisms to
characteristics of innovation (ongoing SPIA studies)
– E.g. providing menu of options rather than training on individual
technologies => ICRAF’s farmer-to-trainer cascade model in Uganda
(Behaghel, Gignoux, Macours, 2020)
– Multitude of outcomes of interest call for new metrics & measurement
innovations
– Magnitude of challenge means we need evidence of reach at scale

3. Shining a Brighter Light at the country level
https://cas.cgiar.org/spia 3
• Systematically and factually document CGIAR
reach across crop, livestock and natural research
management
=> necessary, if not sufficient, for impact
• Ethiopia: Almost all CGIAR centers/CRPs active
=> other countries to follow
• Stocktaking of last 2 decades of research by
CGIAR and national partners
=> 52 innovations and 26 policy influences
• Novel data protocols and methods incorporated
in Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey (ESS)
=> representative and at scale
=> objective & independent measures
• Through partnership with CSA and World Bank
Bit.ly/SPIA-Ethiopia

4. Innovations from different CGIAR research domains have
scaled, but many innovations have not
https://cas.cgiar.org/spia 4
Number of
rural HHs
adopting
each
CGIAR-
related
innovation
(millions)
Based on ESS 4 only (not including wheat and haricot beans)

5. https://cas.cgiar.org/spia 5
• Relatively few innovations reaching large numbers of households
• Widespread adoption of recent agricultural innovations
• When considering portfolio of innovations, instead of single innovations
=> One CGIAR
• Many innovations are not disproportionately more likely to be adopted by
male, larger, richer, more educated or more connected farmers
• Good news for contributing to end rural poverty
• But certain innovations not reaching target households & regions
• Representative estimates of the “who, where and when” of diffusion can
help in process of re-evaluating Theories of Change (ToC)
• Where and for whom are scaling efforts working?
• Why? Synergies between biophysical and policy research?
• Where/for whom are the bottlenecks proving to be too constraining?
Main take-aways from national-level data in Ethiopia