Independent Magazine - issue 12

Innovations exist to enhance mechanisms for evaluating long term development outcomes

Pioneering methodologies can allow multilateral development organizations to enhance their mechanisms for monitoring and evaluating contributions to long-term development outcomes. These include the use of satellite imagery and geospatial data, of data-driven predictive analytics, and of modelling to measure de facto vs de jure governance indicators. Researchers and evaluation practitioners discussed these and other tools during a roundtable discussion hosted by the World Bank Group (WBG), on 25 March 2025.

Titled ‘Measuring Long-Term Outcomes’, the event was held in Rome. Representatives of government institutions, multilateral development agencies, NGOs and academia participated in the discussions. Mona Fetouh, Deputy Director of the Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD (IOE) attended the event, which was the third in a series of roundtables focusing on how to measure long-term development outcomes. The previous two meetings were held in Abidjan and Brussels. Geneva, Washington, and Johannesburg will host the next roundtable meetings, leading up to a global synthesis webinar later this year.

The impetus to launch this series came from the inquiries of the WBG President, Ajay Banga, visà-vis the long-term outcomes achieved by the Bank over the past decades, and the realization that there are no easy answers to provide. Moreover, many challenges exist in this regard. Roundtable participants discussed the short-term nature of projects and programmes that are often plagued by a lack of evidence following completion; the lack of or poor theories of change that fail to properly articulate causal links between outputs and outcomes; the pressures to disburse and implement quickly, which lead to lack of baseline and ex-ante data collection; and challenges in measuring contributions to policy reform work, which are longer-term by nature.

Insufficient investment in monitoring and evaluation and strong data systems, insuffi cient investment in building national evalua tion capacity – which would enable longerterm measurements at country level –, and lack of political will among key stakehold ers to prioritise evaluative work were also amply discussed during the roundtable.

In the face of these mounting challenges, the consensus reached emphasized the necessity of identifying streamlined, adaptable, and economical approaches to bolster accountability. These may include citizen-centric feedback and measurement, such as community-led monitoring and country-led evaluations; digital innovation and data science, such as the use of big data and natural language processing; and a move away from linear to more systems-thinking approaches.

The roundtable series ‘Measuring What Matters: Long-Term Outcomes in Development‘ is part of the World Bank Evolution Roadmap, and contributes directly to the results agenda, under the leadership of the Department for Outcomes.