For Deutsche Investitions–und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH (DEG), NORC is designing and conducting a large-scale monitoring and evaluation of the Competitive African Cotton for Pro-Poor Growth (COMPACI) Program in six African countries – Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Malawi, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. COMPACI is a program funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ) aimed at increasing the family income of 265,000 targeted small-scale cotton farmers by at least 34 percent over three-and-a-half years through increased agricultural productivity. Other social and ecological impacts, such as increased school attendance or improved soil fertility, are also expected. COMPACI is implemented in close collaboration with experienced private sector cotton ginning companies (subgrantees) in the target countries and “Cotton made in Africa” (CmiA), a sustainable cotton brand developed by the Aid by Trade Foundation (AbTF). CmiA specifies certain production conditions relating to farming practices, environment, and labor practices and verifies adherence to these through independent third-party audits.
NORC is conducting a rigorous impact evaluation of the program, where data such as farmer household demographics, farmers' incomes, crop yields, receipt and practice of training on increasing cotton yields, use of credit, and other impacts of COMPACI on participating cotton farmer families are being collected through quantitative household surveys conducted at baseline and at the end of the project (2012). These surveys will permit before-after and treatment-non-treatment comparisons and will support estimates of double-difference estimators to determine the impact attributable to COMPACI.
For the monitoring component of this study, NORC is using data from several sources to track the program’s progress and performance. Primary data on farmer expectations and satisfaction with the cropping season results, farmer priorities, and the constraints that they face will be derived from focus groups. Data on monitoring indicators - area planted, total production for participating farmers, and fertilizer and pesticide usage – will be gathered by subgrantees in each country. Data on framework conditions relating to the cotton sector and weather patterns, will come from secondary sources in Ministries of Agriculture, cotton associations, and mass media. Finally, the team will gather data on the CmiA initiative and its impacts on providing extra income to participating farmers, community projects funded by the income from CmiA, as well as the number of participating farmers certified to meet CmiA standards.