PIDG’s 2018 Impact and Learning Series

Our purpose is to combat poverty in the poorest and most fragile countires through pioneering infrastructure to help economies grow and change people’s lives.

Measurement of our development impact is integral to this in two ways:

1.Accountability

We must provide robust evidence to account for and justify the use of public funding. In this, we are accountable to our owners, host Governments, civil society and to the communities we seek to serve.

2.Learning, improving and demonstrating
Impact measurement provides us with data that can be used to improve performance and guide our strategy. When selecting projects and questions for evaluation, we draw on the CART Principles put forward by the Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) network. Sharing knowledge with the wider market also supports our work to crowd in more investment and promote effective models for infrastructure in low-income countries.

This series is a new resource to support our commitment to accountability and learning. We summarise our annual programme of evaluation and research, as well as emerging lessons and implications for future activities. The reports draws on other key resources for learning and accountability, including:

• PIDG’s Annual Review
• Data.pidg.org – PIDG’s open database of transactions
• PIDG publications including project case studies, thematic reviews and evaluations.

This series covers the following themes prioritised for research in 2017-18

1.Affordability of infrastructure – How do we ensure commercially viable infrastructure projects support the delivery of services that are affordable for low-income and poor people?

2.Economic development – How should we measure the contribution of infrastructure projects to inclusive economic growth?

3.Climate change – What contributions do PIDG projects make to climate change mitigation, adaptation and resilience?

4.Demonstration effects – Do PIDG transactions influence market behaviour, and lead to replication without PIDG involvement?

5.Gender, diversity and inclusion – What are the opportunities for infrastructure projects to support gender empowerment and benefits for women and girls?

In addition, the series explores the methodology that we use to gather, review and evaluate data from our projects; and highlights lessons we have learned about what works well and where the key challenges remain.