R4 Rural Resilience Initiative in Senegal - Evaluation Summary (2015)

Climate change puts millions of people's lives at risk, trapping them in food insecurity and poverty. When climate disasters strike, the situation of vulnerable people quickly deteriorate into a food and nutrition crisis. The R4 Rural Resilience Initiative, a partnership between the World Food Programme and Oxfam America, offers integrated risk management strategies to build farmers’ resilience to climate-related shocks and to improve their livelihoods. In 2015, R4 commissioned Dalberg Global Advisors to undertake the first phase of the R4 Senegal impact evaluation. The consultants used a quantitative (difference-in-differences) and qualitative (desk-based research and focus group discussion) methodology, analyzing impacts on a sample of 1,776 households across two regions, Tambacounda and Kolda, with particular attention to the rural community of Koussanar in Tambacounda, where R4 was first piloted in 2013. This document presents the preliminary results of the evaluation.