Monitoring and Evaluation of Complex Market-based Approaches to Improve Micronutrient Malnutrition: The Case of Amsterdam Initiative against Malnutrition (AIM)

Abstract

Objectives: AIM is a partnership of 20 organizations in Europe and Africa. It includes 7 projects that combine assurance of sufficient and affordable quality of food supply (‘push') with stimulation of demand for nutritious foods (‘pull'). AIM provides the opportunity to assess the effectiveness of different market-based solutions and extract lessons for up-scaling and replication. The public-private and multi-strategy character of the AIM programme requires a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system that addresses the complexity of the AIM partnership and its interventions. Methods: Through participatory consultation result pathways and M&E plans for each project were developed.  These laid the basis for the AIM overall programme logic and M&E framework. Results: Building the M&E system involved (re)defining project impact pathways; identifying indicators; further landscape analysis; investment in baseline studies and evaluations; designing monitoring and reflection processes; formulation of project overarching learning questions and specific research questions within the projects. Conclusions: Building a meaningful M&E system for a complex programme like AIM's requires: bridging a development perspective (government, NGOs) with a production perspective (business); addressing reluctance to cover extra costs for M&E; finding creative solutions for building evidence, including rigorous designs for complex interventions; and reaching agreement on sharing results in the public domain which is not always desirable from a production perspective. Building capacity and trust coupled with good governance forms the basis for this process.x