Our Projects

Female entrepreneurs tend to have lower levels of education, less access to relevant business information, and face higher childcare and household demands, restricting their ability to attend traditional training and networking activities. As such, the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL), the Innovations in Financing Women Entrepreneurs (IFWE) project, seeks to pilot, scale up, and evaluate new approaches to empowering Ethiopia’s women entrepreneurs. IFWE works with Mercy Corps to bring its existing MicroMentor platform, which facilitates digital connections between mentors and mentees, to the Somali Region in Ethiopia. Kimetrica and its subcontractor, Effect X, are conducting an exploratory qualitative study of the MicroMentor pilot intervention, using focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews, to understand local cultural views towards business mentorship, as well as expectations, experiences, challenges, and successes using the MicroMentor platform. This information will equip the World Bank to provide female entrepreneurs in Ethiopia with the most effective support required to overcome their unique set of challenges.

Every year, thousands of Filipinos are affected by natural disasters, losing their lives, livelihoods, and homes to severe weather events. Over several years, with support from the World Bank, the Government of the Philippines (GoP) has worked to provide financial protection for communities against such events. The Philippines parametric catastrophe risk insurance program represents a key milestone in these efforts. From 2017 to 2019, the GoP placed two parametric insurance policies on the international capital markets. The first policy (2017/2018) provided over $200 million in coverage for communities at risk of typhoons and earthquakes. The second policy (2018/2019), doubled this coverage. The program insured two types of coverage: one for 25 provincial governments against emergency losses from major typhoons and another for National Government Agencies against emergency losses from major typhoons and earthquakes for national government assets (based on losses in the 25 provinces). As part of the closeout process for the two-year pilot, the World Bank commissioned Kimetrica to conduct a Lessons Learned Evaluation to better understand the successes and challenges of the program. The results informed the growing evidence base on parametric insurance and was used to inform similar potential programs in other countries. The evaluation involved a desk review, key informant interviews with a variety program stakeholders, analysis of data, and a final report of lessons learned.

Kimetrica is designing the Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Framework for the World Bank’s Global Risk Financing Facility (GRiF). GRiF is a Multi-Donor Trust Fund that awards grants to test, pilot, and scale different types of disaster risk financing instruments such as parametric insurance products, catastrophe bonds, and surge financing linked to shock responsive social protection systems. Securing financing in advance helps vulnerable countries better manage the financial impacts of disasters, shocks and crises. The comprehensive MEL Framework includes (i) the design of a Theory of Change diagram and narrative, (ii) the development of a results framework and reporting structure, (iii) the identification of key evaluation questions, (iv) the creation of a rolling evaluation plan, and (v) the buildout of a learning and communications platform of activities. Kimetrica used a utilization-focused approach for the design of the MEL framework, ensuring that the intended users of research findings (GRiF stakeholders) are engaged in decision-making around the design of each study. In complex programs such as GRiF, questions of attribution are difficult to answer using traditional (and more rigid) experimental or quasi-experimental evaluation designs. As such, Kimetrica designed the system using contribution analysis for the analytical framework, through which the World Bank can capture, analyze, and build its evidence base in disaster risk finance.

Ethiopia is highly prone to climate and weather induced hazards, including droughts. These droughts can lead to failed harvests and reduction in livestock, water shortages and, ultimately, periods of food insecurity and reduced resilience of individuals and households to further shocks. In response, Ethiopia has mature mechanisms in place to manage food insecurity and famine prevention.  However, there is a need for more timely and reliable analysis to help trigger funding decisions. In collaboration with the World Bank, the Government of Ethiopia, and other partners, Kimetrica carried out a consultancy to strengthen the food security early warning system, which bolstered the Government’s early warning system to better predict, mitigate, and ultimately reduce the impact of climate and weather induced disasters in Ethiopia.

The Agricultural Growth Program (AGP) was a collaborative initiative of the Government of Ethiopia, the World Bank, and multiple international donors, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The AGP promoted economic growth in four high-rainfall regions of Ethiopia with strong agricultural potential -- Oromia; Amhara; Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s Region (SNNPR); and Tigray. The AGP-Agribusiness and Market Development (AGP-AMDe) project was one of the three pillars of the AGP and focused specifically on making agriculture profitable. Its goal was to sustainably reduce poverty and hunger by improving productivity and competitiveness of value chains that offered job and income opportunities to rural households. Kimetrica developed the project’s monitoring and evaluation framework for the initiative. This included aligning the project’s performance management plan with results indicators and customising Kimetrica’s commercial Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) software, ki-projects™, to manage all aspects of the project’s performance monitoring requirements. In addition, Kimetrica carried out a 2,000-household baseline survey. Its data laid the groundwork for the monitoring of and reporting on the project's results.  

As part of the World Bank’s Global Service Delivery Indicator Surveys, the Kimetrica research team developed data capture applications using the Census and Survey Processing System (CSPro), and trained local firms in data entry and data quality control. In addition, Kimetrica’s statisticians provided support in data quality reviews as well as recommendations on data improvements to ensure accurate and comprehensive analysis. The work had a significant impact on data quality and capacity development in survey and data management systems among local firms.

The World Bank contracted Kimetrica to conduct the Somaliland Enterprise Survey, which included both household interviews and interviews of registered businesses in Somaliland. Over 1,500 households and 500 enterprises were sampled among 12 clusters. Kimetrica developed a registry of enterprises, corroborated the registry through phone calls and on-site visits, and completed a final registration using mobile teams. The work included questionnaire piloting, a public awareness campaign, survey training, and field enumeration. The study found that most firms in Somaliland are sole proprietorship firms. Foreign direct investment was low; however, the majority of business owners interviewed relied, to some degree, on remittances from family members living outside of Somaliland. Female business ownership was also very limited in part due to limited access to financing and micro-loans. The study found that access to finance was the single biggest obstacle to business expansion.

The delivery of basic public services, such as education and health care, has a huge impact on the quality of life in developing countries. Aware that delivering these services was an issue, the World Bank worked in collaboration with the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) to develop and institutionalize a set of indicators to better gauge the quality of public services in the designated sectors. As part of this program, Kimetrica designed and implemented a survey in 300 beneficiary schools in Kenya. Using micro-computers and Kimetrica’s survey software, ki-metrics^TM, for data capture, Kimetrica’s survey teams collected data to better understand the performance of the education sector; the flow of funds throughout the sector; and input indicators, including those related to teachers, school infrastructure and finances. Together, these data formed a set of indicators used to better measure the impact of interventions in the education sector.

The Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH) is a consortium of Kenyan and North American academic and health centres led by Indiana University, working in partnership with the Government of Kenya. AMPATH was created in response to providing life-saving care in the face of the HIV pandemic. AMPATH treated over 140,000 HIV-positive persons, with almost 2,000 new patients being enrolled each month at over 60 urban and rural clinic sites throughout western Kenya. In addition, AMPATH had reached over half a million persons through a home-based counseling and testing program that enjoys a 98+ percent rate of acceptance into the homes it visits. The program reduced mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS to below 2 percent.   To measure the impact of AMPATH’s home-based counseling program, Kimetrica conducted 3,000 household and key informant interviews with religious leaders, village chiefs, heads of women’s groups and village elders.  The survey included finalizing and testing tools, training and managing enumerators, developing a data reduction program based on Kimetrica’s survey management software, ki-metricsTM, and providing preliminary data analysis and data reports to the World Bank.  The World Bank used the final survey to measure the overall impact of its investment in AMPATH.

With support from the World Bank, the Government of Tanzania implemented the Scaling Up Sanitation and Handwashing Project to mitigate the impact of poor sanitation and hygiene on human health.  The project focused on behaviour change and the development of local expertise in the supply of sanitation facilities in rural markets. Working at both the individual and community levels, the project’s social marketing messages, based on similar approaches around the world, intended to influence the use of improved sanitation facilities and encourage habits of improved hygiene. To evaluate the effectiveness of the project, Kimetrica designed a randomised, statistically significant impact evaluation.  The evaluation methodology included the development of a sample frame, mapping of enumeration areas, development of the survey implementation plan, and management and implementation of a 4,600 household survey. The World Bank used Kimetrica’s methodology to undertake evaluations on the impact of the intervention.