Resilience Evidence Gap Analysis (REGA)

Context

USAID/Ethiopia faces a number of development obstacles, adding to the complexity of its resilience portfolio. Despite this, the Government of Ethiopia and USAID/Ethiopia are making significant progress in addressing food insecurity and climate vulnerability through programming that enhances community resilience against shocks from the household level to the global level.

Identifying and making sense of the effective interventions found in the Mission’s trove of information is necessary to uncover what USAID-supported efforts lead to more resilient households, communities and systems in Ethiopia. The Resilience Evidence Gap Analysis (REGA) aims to provide USAID and implementing partners with the most focused and relevant resilience findings, including information on the sequencing, layering and integration of interventions in Ethiopia to date.

Methodology

This research looked at interventions across different resilience domains, including conflicts (inclusive of the current social-political situation), the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and drought, and economic and household-level shocks.

Researchers began the analysis by coding and ranking the library of documents, dividing them into categories based on their relevance and rigor. The team then conducted a qualitative textual and content analysis using a strength of evidence matrix to ensure a systematic and consistent evaluative process.

Next, the team conducted a contribution analysis of USAID/Ethiopia’s existing documentation to investigate evidence of stated outcomes. This approach allowed the team to reveal causal links while also interrogating assumptions directly to identify gaps in the evidence or theory of change. By systematically unpacking intermediate steps between the start of an intervention and its resilience outcomes, the team deconstructed the complexity of communities and systems against the criteria of need versus sufficiency, while layering and sequencing other relevant interventions.

Findings

This targeted analysis allowed for solid comparisons between resilience-related interventions — alone or in sequence — to determine their effectiveness based on the consistency of reporting across sources. The analysis of under what conditions or in what ways USAID/Ethiopia interventions result in more resilient households, communities and systems consistently revealed:

• Systems approaches are consistently more impactful than interventions conducted in isolation. In contrast, evidence of purposeful sequencing, layering and integration of interventions was far less consistent, highlighting the need to examine further what is and is not working.
• Early action and spending consistently lead to more cost-effective results, such as avoiding harm, but these approaches can face administrative barriers.
• Households and communities have consistent perceptions of greater preparedness or resilience to future shocks when programming leads to bonding (deepening existing relationships), bridging (creating new relationships beyond existing social circles) and linking (building relationships with those in power positions) in social capital (a person’s network of social relationships) — particularly as part of a multifaceted approach (including intervention sequencing, layering and integration).

Recommended Actions Based on Evidence

The analysis of USAID/Ethiopia-supported resilience-building investments and activities led to a presentation of initial findings, a detailed technical report with stakeholder feedback and a knowledge management portal (the library).

At this stage in the activity, the analysis findings will directly inform work planning for RLA’s learning space analysis and subsequent Resilience Learning Agenda. It will also form the foundation for RLA actions to address the evidence gaps directly and meaningfully as implementation progresses.