At a Glance

Funder:

Millennium Challenge Corporation

Project Time Frame:

2009-2010

Madagascar: Reducing Poverty and Increasing Investment

The Millennium Challenge Corporation’s Compact with the government of Madagascar aimed to increase investment in rural Madagascar to reduce poverty. In an effort to increase household income and land productivity in the five intervention zones, the Compact focused on increasing land titling and land security; increasing competition in the financial sector; and improving agricultural production technologies and market capacities. Due to an undemocratic transition in power, the Millennium Challenge Corporation terminated the Compact with the Republic of Madagascar in August 2009, one year before the project’s anticipated completion date.

The Compact sought to increase land titling and security through the modernization of the Land Tenure Services department, the regularization of land titling laws, and the decentralization of land services. The financial sector project promoted the integration of rural areas into the economy by initiating legal and regulatory reform, strengthening the National Savings Bank, developing new instruments for agribusiness credit, modernizing the National Interbank Payment System, and improving credit skills training. The Agricultural Business Investment Project sought to establish a commercial agricultural and business network that provided a range of services to rural producers and entrepreneurs through Agricultural Business Centers.

Mathematica is designing and conducting a rigorous ex post evaluation of key activities to examine their effectiveness and determine their overall impact on both intermediate and long-term outcomes. We’ve performed a thorough review of existing program and administrative data; assessed the strategic importance and level of implementation of each activity; determined the degree to which each activity met indicator targets; and established the most appropriate evaluation designs. For our methodology, we’ve determined that a descriptive analysis is the best design for evaluating the decentralization of land services activity; a pre-post analysis is the most feasible design for evaluating the National Interbank Payment System activity; and a matched group post-test is the best option of evaluating the agricultural program.