Data, has become an integral part of our daily lives. The World Bank’s World Development Report 2021: Data for Better Lives – highlights that innovations resulting from the creative new uses of data could prove to be one of the most life-changing events of this era. Yet, as with most major innovations there is an inflection point; how will policy makers ensure equitable access to data and the capabilities to use data to generate insights that ultimately, improve lives?
The ESA Global Development Assistance (GDA) programme is a global partnership to mainstream the use of Earth Observation (EO) into development operations. It aims to bridge the awareness, acceptance, and adoption gap between developed countries and those supported by the International Financial Institutions (IFIs), such as World Bank and Asian Development Bank, to ensure that they can equitably access, use and benefit from satellite EO data.
The GDA programme is acutely aware that against a backdrop of both a rapidly improving data environment and the critical data needs of developing countries, it is vital to address the question of how to support uptake of EO at scale. Furthermore, it is necessary to engage in questions of how EO supports and improves both the processes and the outcomes for sustainable development. ESA’s commitment to understanding and generating impact is illustrated in the commissioning of a substantial literature review by Caribou Space exploring the impact of EO across thematic areas.
Building on those preparatory efforts, GDA now invests programmatically in the setup of a robust measurement system to articulate, track and understand the programme’s impact. This includes defining the measurement framework with a Theory of Change and aligned indicators. This enables tracking of progress towards intended impacts and learnings to optimise the implementation of the programme.
Below is the GDA Theory of Change which is an illustration of the impact pathway that could be catalysed by the three-pronged strategy of Knowledge Development, Capacity Building, and Skills Transfer.
The GDA Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) activity lead – Caribou Space – is supporting the sector-specific GDA AID consortia and IFI programmes/projects to gather indicators and insights to track progress. These will be aggregated in a GDA programme dashboard on a quarterly basis and will support benchmarking, and cross-programme learning. In addition to quarterly programme progress snapshots, Caribou Space will be leading a series of public domain evaluations from 2022 to 2025 to assess the cumulative impact of the GDA programme and the cooperation framework with the IFIs. These will be made available on the GDA web portal as they are published.
Caribou Space have extensive, related experience on similar programmes with ESA and the UK Space Agency and their previous space sector evaluations are available here.
