The Growth & Employment in States (GEMS) project is a Nigerian employment initiative supported by Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Trade and Investment (FMTI) and funded by the World Bank and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID).
The aim of GEMS
The project is aimed at job creation and increased non-oil growth. DFID is providing a grant of £90 million and the World Bank a concessionary loan of US$160 million. A key target of the project is the creation of at least 100,000 jobs.
Challenges
The project faces a number of challenges in measuring its results. First and foremost, it is a large and complex project, implemented by different companies, across different states and sectors, with a wide variety of interventions. Secondly, it makes use of the Making Markets Work for the Poor (M4P) approach to economic development, which has a number of characteristics that challenge traditional results measurement techniques. Finally, the project is delivered in a period of global development practice dominated by demands for effective measurement and communication of results and value for money.
Our role
Itad was commissioned by GEMS to respond to these challenges and develop a handbook to provide a consistent framework for capturing and reporting results and to ensure a coherent approach to results measurement across the project.
The handbook was developed in close collaboration with GEMS managers. It provides a set of definitions for key terms (the poor, ‘income increase’, employment, etc) whose meanings we might think we understand, but which quickly unravel when two sets of results using different methods and measurements are compared. It also provides a set of measurement standards and guidelines for each category of intervention in the project, whether focused on developing skills, introducing new products and services, advocacy, business development services or business environment reforms.
The handbook provides innovative and practical guidance to enable GEMS to more rigorously measure its results. Whilst common definitions and approaches have been developed, the handbook has been designed to allow for flexibility to tailor approaches to individual interventions and contexts.
Image © GEMS Results Measurement Handbook_Itad