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Commentary

The Evaluation Gap: Why Development Programmes Fail to Prove Their Worth

Billions flow into development programming each year, yet fewer than one in five programmes undergoes a rigorous impact evaluation. The consequence is not merely academic. Without credible evidence of what works, funders recycle failed approaches, practitioners lose institutional memory, and the communities these programmes claim to serve bear the cost of well-intentioned guesswork. Closing this gap requires more than technical fixes. It demands a fundamental shift in how organisations value and invest in evaluation from the outset.

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2025Open Source

Building PRAXIS: An AI Skill for Programme Evaluation

Why I built an open-source evaluation methodologist and how it draws on 12 years of field experience.

2025Reflection

Evidence in Fragile Settings: Lessons from a Decade of Field Evaluation

Working across South Sudan, Burundi, and the Sahel has taught me that the most valuable evaluations are not necessarily the most methodologically sophisticated ones. They are the ones designed with enough pragmatism to survive first contact with the field. In displacement camps where baseline data is scarce and programme timelines shift with each security incident, the evaluator who insists on textbook designs will produce nothing at all. What follows are the principles I have come to rely on when the conditions on the ground refuse to cooperate with the evaluation plan.

2024Analysis

When Data Meets Context: The Case for Mixed Methods in Global Health

Quantitative data tells us that a nutrition programme reduced stunting by 12 percentage points. It cannot tell us why mothers in one district trusted the community health workers while those in the neighbouring district did not. That second question often matters more for scale-up. Mixed methods research bridges this gap, not by compromising on rigour, but by recognising that different questions require different forms of evidence. My experience designing evaluations across six countries has consistently reinforced this principle.

2024Think Global Health (CFR)

COP28 Sparks Urgency Amid Climate Funding Shortfall

How multilateral organisations should finance climate adaptation and mitigation to combat climate change's harms.

2023Field Note

Rethinking Nutrition Surveillance in Conflict Zones

Standard nutrition surveillance relies on assumptions that collapse in active conflict: stable populations, accessible sampling frames, and the luxury of repeat measurement. In South Sudan, I watched SMART surveys become meaningless within weeks of completion as populations shifted and food access changed overnight. The field needs surveillance systems that are designed for instability from the start, not peacetime tools awkwardly adapted for war.

2022GCERF

Climate Change, Food Insecurity and Violent Extremism in the Sahel

Reflections on the nexus under the new political dynamics in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.

2017Editorial

Making Every Baby Count

A reflection on the Helping Babies Breathe Program and strategies to reduce birth asphyxia in sub-Saharan Africa.