Evaluating Systems Transformation: End-Term Impact Assessment of a Climate-Smart Livestock Programme in Kenya’s ASALs
Capability Area: Research, Evaluation & Impact Measurement
The Challenge
Large-scale development programmes often generate significant activities; but a critical question remains: Are these interventions truly delivering sustainable impact, and what should be scaled, adapted, or redesigned?
In Kenya’s Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs), agro-pastoralist communities face:
- chronic feed deficits,
- climate shocks,
- low productivity, and
- limited market integration.
The ICSIAPL project, implemented by SNV and KALRO with funding from the European Union and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, sought to address these systemic constraints through climate-smart innovations and integrated landscape management.
At the end of the 54-month programme, stakeholders needed more than a performance review.
They needed credible, decision-grade evidence to determine:
- what worked,
- why it worked, and
- how to scale impact across the ASAL regions.
Why This Assignment Matters
End-term evaluations are not just accountability exercises; they are strategic decision tools. For complex, multi-partner programmes like ICSIAPL, a robust evaluation:
- validates results against investment,
- identifies pathways for scaling and sustainability, and
- generates actionable insights for future programming and policy alignment.
Without this level of analysis, successful innovations risk remaining isolated pilots rather than system-wide solutions.
Our Approach
We applied a rigorous, OECD/DAC-aligned mixed-methods evaluation framework to assess performance across relevance, coherence, efficiency, effectiveness, impact, and sustainability.
Our approach combined:
- Large-scale quantitative analysis: Surveying households to assess income, adoption, and resilience outcomes.
- Deep qualitative inquiry: Conducting key informant interviews and focus group discussions with stakeholders across government, private sector, and community levels.
- Statistical validation of impact: Establishing statistically significant income gains across households, strengthening the credibility of findings.
- Systems-level analysis: Going beyond outputs to examine:
- institutional coordination
- market linkages
- policy alignment
- behaviour change dynamics
- Climate and resilience lens: Assessing how integrated landscape management (ILM) contributed simultaneously to:
- climate adaptation
- mitigation
- and livelihood resilience
What We Delivered
The evaluation produced a comprehensive, evidence-driven assessment of programme performance and transformation, including:
- A full OECD/DAC analysis covering:
- relevance and policy alignment
- coherence across stakeholders
- efficiency of delivery models
- effectiveness of interventions
- long-term impact and sustainability
- Quantified impact results, including the significant increases in household incomes, increase in milk productivity and income from dairy, and adoption of improved food varieties.
- Resilience insights, showing how households adopted climate adaptation strategies, diversification of income sources and improved savings behaviour
- Systems transformation evidence, including strengthened livestock sector coordination; integration of livestock feed strategies into County Integrated Development Plans (CIDPs); and, increased private sector engagement in forage production and commercialization
- Actionable recommendations to guide:
- scaling of climate-smart innovations
- deeper market integration
- enhanced private sector participation
- long-term sustainability of interventions
The Impact
The evaluation provided stakeholders with clear, credible evidence to inform the next phase of investment and programming, enabling:
- Validation of ICSIAPL as a proof-of-concept for climate-smart livestock systems transformation
- Strategic insights to support scaling across Kenya’s ASAL regions
- Strengthened alignment between donor investments, government policy, and market actors
- Improved understanding of how to sequence interventions for resilience and commercialization
- Identification of gaps in behaviour change, aggregation, and private sector engagement
The evaluation demonstrated that: resilience in agro-pastoral systems is not achieved through isolated interventions, but through integrated, system-wide approaches linking productivity, markets, and landscape management.
What This Demonstrates
This assignment demonstrates Crescent Impact Analytics’ expertise in delivering high-quality, decision-oriented evaluations for complex, multi-stakeholder programmes.
It highlights our ability to:
- Apply rigorous evaluation frameworks while maintaining real-world relevance
- Translate evidence into strategic insights for scaling and policy influence
- Assess not just programme performance, but systems transformation and sustainability
- Support clients to move from results measurement to evidence-driven decision-making
At Crescent Impact Analytics, we go beyond evaluation as a reporting requirement; we position it as a strategic tool for learning, adaptation, and long-term impact.