Midterm performance evaluation of the Feed the Future Rwanda nguriza nshore activity

The evaluation used a mixed-methods approach to assess the activity’s employment multiplier model; its efforts to improve financial institution lending for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs); and its efforts to facilitate investment in MSMEs. The evaluation identified several issues causing inaccuracies with the activity’s jobs creation model. These include issues related to properly attributing jobs created to activity interventions, failure to count jobs saved, the model’s extreme sensitivity to classification of MSME by sector, and the activity’s use of “job years” to count jobs created (compared to unique jobs created). Further, staff turnover at NN resulted in the loss of institutional knowledge about how its jobs creation model works. The activity’s efforts to train Savings and Credit Cooperatives (SACCOs) has successfully improved their institutional capacity. Partnering with larger financial institutions to increase their orientation towards MSMEs has been more of a challenge, and progress has been slow. However, partnerships with non-banks have successfully facilitated access to financial services for MSMEs who are, in turn, satisfied with those services. The activity’s investment facilitation efforts have led to investments in MSMEs that have increased employment and revenue at beneficiary MSMEs. However, MSMEs going through NN’s investment pipeline reported a lack of responsiveness by the activity and the pipeline process has been time consuming, taking 10 months on average to procure investment