Achieving Rural Transformation: Results and Lessons from IFAD Impact Assessments

This synthesis draws on 17 recent IFAD Impact Assessments conducted in various countries and production systems to analyse project activities and theories of change. It groups projects into four areas of focus:

• environmental protection;
• value chain development;
• community infrastructure development; and
• participatory development planning.

It then examines the lessons learned and classifies the lessons into six themes in order to offer insights into the development pathways that can help achieve rural transformation.

The Synthesis Report serves as a roadmap for operational Teams and is important for three main reasons:

• it draws primary evidence to identify robust, reliable findings by projects’ typology;
• it uses the findings to help the design of new projects and strategies;
• it analyses the underlying projects’ theory of change that helped to generate the expected impacts.

Overall, this synthesis aims to inform IFAD’s stakeholders about the typology of projects evaluated and lessons learned from them to improve the design of similar future projects and to draw insights into successful drivers of rural transformation.