Dreampipe, which ran from 2016 to 2018, focused on DFID’s 28 priority countries in Africa and Asia, where NRW is particularly relevant due to water scarcity, rapid urbanisation and a growing population. To increase sustainability, investments had to come from non-traditional sources, mainly commercial lenders, as opposed to governments, development banks and agencies.
Dreampipe, which was delivered by IMC Worldwide, is one of a number of innovation prizes under the UK Aid-funded Ideas to Impact programme, which was established to test the value of using innovation prizes to achieve international development outcomes, often to encourage people to act differently over months or years.
The programme’s evaluators at Itad are supporting Ideas to Impact to understand if such prizes worked as intended, and when and where they could be useful as a funding mechanism for international development, compared to other forms of funding, such as grants.
The Dreampipe evaluation report explores what they found out.
