Evidence in a fragmented world: some reflections

Marie Gaarder 02 June 2026 blog  

Aid has always been shaped by donor interests, but development cooperation is now becoming more overtly interest-driven. Can development outcomes survive inside that new framing? In this blog, I highlight three key points and two boldish ideas I covered in my remarks at the recently-held OECD Conference on the Future of Development Cooperation. 

In a world of tighter budgets, geopolitical competition, and mounting pressure to demonstrate results, evidence and learning become more important, not less. What changes is the urgency with which we must deploy them.

A lasting win against food insecurity

Astrid Garcia 14 April 2026 blog  

At the height of uncertainty, many families arriving in Colombia faced a daily question: Will we eat today?

For Marisol, a mother of three, food was never just about hunger. It was about responsibility. In the early months after migrating, stretching the household budget required constant calculation. “Sometimes I reduced my own portions so my children could eat,” she recalls.

Making AI work: Practical applications in impact evaluation

Carlos Enrique Galvan Falcon, Fiona Kastel, Devika Lakhote, Sanchi Lokhande, Geetika Pandya 08 April 2026 blog  

Generative AI is increasingly becoming a part of researchers’ and analysts’ toolkits and reshaping how we design and deliver our work. But what does this mean for the international development community, particularly evaluators?

Empowering rural women through enterprise in India: the DAY-NRLM journey and the road ahead

Abhinav Dubey 24 March 2026 blog  
Enterprises are the engines of growth in rural economies, extending beyond agriculture to diversify income sources. For women, engaging in or leading such ventures does more than generate income—it fosters financial independence, strengthens their voice within their households, and opens pathways to leadership roles in their communities.

Why impact evaluations matter: Lessons from Bangladesh’s rapidly evolving aquaculture sector

Rishabh Bhattacharya, Rohan Shah 25 February 2026 blog  

 How and to what extent do development programs deliver intended outcomes in a rapidly evolving sector? 3ie’s recent evaluation of the IDEA project (Increasing Income, Diversifying Diets, and Empowering Women in Aquaculture), implemented by WorldFish in northwest Bangladesh, offers valuable insights in this regard and helps ensure that impact is not just visible, but well understood and correctly attributed.

Digital financial inclusion through UPI: Insights from a community-driven initiative

Fathima Ramshi, Divya Pandey, Zoe Kennedy-Hughes, Tanvi 23 February 2026 blog  

India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has emerged as a powerful driver of financial inclusion, transforming how people send and receive money and accounting for nearly 85% of all digital payments in 2025. Yet this rapid expansion has not benefited everyone equally. For many low-income women—especially those with limited digital access and literacy—bank accounts remain underused, savings stay informal, and digital payments feel out of reach, underscoring the gap between the availability of digital infrastructure and meaningful financial inclusion.

How will we ever learn? Towards a sustainable evidence infrastructure

Birte Snilstveit, Marie Gaarder, Carson Christiano, Jo Weech 18 February 2026 blog  
Over the past two decades, the volume of rigorous impact evaluation evidence has grown dramatically. This is a major success for the evidence-informed development community. Yet despite this growth, synthesizing this evidence in systematic reviews and meta-analyses that provide clear and reliable findings for decision-making remains slower, more expensive, and more fragmented than it should be.

Updates to the irregular migration evidence gap map and implications for policy and research

Sanghwa Lee, Maria Daniela Anda Leon, Pierre Marion, Shannon Shisler, Carolyn Huang, Anil Thota 13 February 2026 blog  

Policymakers, researchers and practitioners now have access to the most up-to-date rigorous evidence base on interventions addressing root causes and drivers of irregular migration, a field in which research continues to grow. The evidence base is available in our evidence gap map (EGM), first published in 2023, now updated with support from the Policy and Operations Evaluation Department (IOB) of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

What indices fail to tell us: Food hygiene and dietary shift among rural women in Rajasthan

Abhinav Dubey 05 January 2026 blog  

3ie’s multi-year evaluation of one of the world’s largest poverty-alleviation programs, i.e. India’s Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM), has generated rich evidence on how self-help groups and their federations are reshaping women’s economic opportunities in rural India.