How does AFD measure the impact of the projects it supports?

As a public bank for France and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, AFD has a responsibility to finance effective initiatives. The information generated and lessons learned from AFD’s evaluations are used to inform its continuous improvement strategy and thus realign its projects to improve quality and maximize impact. This data is also used as a basis for decision-making, dialogue with development stakeholders, and reporting of results to elected representatives, citizens and partner countries.

1. Before the project launch

Every financing project is subject to a preliminary (or “ex-ante”) analysis which is performed by a project team at AFD, with expertise in technical and financial operations. Projects also undergo a sustainable development analysis to assess the expected deliverables against the United Nations’ seventeen SDGs. A “sustainable development opinion” is then issued by an independent entity from the operational departments, thus informing the decisions of AFD’s governing bodies (although certain categories of project are excluded from this process).

Impact assessments are also conducted as part of environmental and social risk management, in more or less depth depending on the level of risk, in order to assess and prevent negative effects on the environment and communities. 

The results of these ex-ante assessments are then verified by several departments independent of the operational teams, including the risk management, strategy, innovation and research, and legal divisions. AFD's teams can only submit financing projects to the Board of Directors for approval once all these rigorous checks have been completed.

See also: Where does AFD Group's global investment money come from?

2. During project implementation

Once the project is underway, the project manager can then put in place a monitoring and evaluation system that is used to steer the project's implementation.

AFD’s teams are required to monitor the project’s progress via reports submitted by project managers and field supervision teams, as well as audits by external consultants. Nonetheless, not all projects go exactly according to plan and problems can sometimes arise. “In such cases, conducting an assessment midway through the project can be useful to help reset its course,” says Jean-Claude Pirès, Director of AFD’s Evaluation and Learning Department. This strategy was applied to this forest conservation project in Madagascar, for example.

3. After project completion

Once a project has been implemented, AFD’s operational teams draft a completion report which details the resources used, its achievements and results. A project evaluation may then be carried out to help them identify what worked well and not so well, so they can plan for a new phase or analyze the impact of innovative projects.

The project team must either set aside a part of its budget for this evaluation in advance, or the decision will be made after its completion, following internal discussions at AFD (among the Evaluation Department, Technical Divisions, Regional Divisions and Administrators, for example) or with the French institutions involved, as well as with beneficiaries and project managers.

See also: Evaluations report 2023, also available in Datawall format

4. Several years after project completion

Certain projects are also evaluated several years after their completion. This generally takes place two or three years later, in cases where measuring the project’s long-term impact is deemed worthwhile. This type of evaluation is referred to as “ex-post”. “It’s important to ask the right questions at the right time. That’s why we take a customized approach to evaluation,” says Jean-Claude Pirès. Various methods and tools are used depending on the type of project, including statistical analysis, satellite data, individual interviews, focus groups, and documentary analysis.

In general, AFD’s project evaluations provide essential food for thought for teams looking to finance projects in the future. Not only do these assessments provide practical recommendations, they also help foster a culture of evaluation. They are designed to guide project managers in their own strategies and projects, and to ensure that all project stakeholders benefit from the lessons learned. 

In total, around 50% of completed projects are subject to this kind of assessment. “This target is aligned with international best practices for financing agencies. We only evaluate a project if we can draw on the lessons learned to improve our operations,” says Jean-Claude Pirès.

Most of these evaluations are outsourced to external assessment firms. However, they are sometimes carried out by in-house experts who have not had any involvement with the project. 

To find out more: Project evaluation documents can be accessed (with close to 400 project evaluations available) via AFD’s open-data portal.

5. Additional evaluations

AFD also performs three other types of evaluation:

Wide-ranging evaluations: these types of evaluation focus on a specific theme, sector, geographical area or financial instrument. They tend to cover a broader scope and longer period of time than project evaluations. They may also target sector-specific, geographical or cross-disciplinary strategies. For example, in 2024, AFD conducted an evaluation of its Covid-19 response via its Health in Common Initiative, which involved close to a hundred projects. It also performed an evaluation in 2023 to assess how climate change adaptation was being incorporated into water and agriculture projects in Africa and Madagascar, among a sample group of 35 projects. The majority of these evaluations are published on AFD’s website, under the heading “AFD ExPost Collection” or in scientific journals.

See also: How do we Measure Adaptation to Climate Change?

Scientific impact evaluations: these assessments aim to measure positive impacts that can be directly attributed to projects supported by AFD. As data on the impact of development initiatives is currently in short supply, this type of evaluation draws on methods taken from social science research. Because of the specific methods used, these evaluations tend to focus on one aspect of a project, rather than all of its deliverables.

Capitalization evaluations: based on the findings of evaluations or analytical reviews, as well as the experience of those involved, these capitalization activities prioritize a collective approach, involving several projects, to help operational teams gain a wider perspective on their practices.

See also: AFD Group Monitoring and Evaluation Policy