A Mokoro and Foresight Development Associates team have completed a comprehensive assessment of results based financing (RBF) approaches to education programming in Nepal, Mozambique and Tanzania. The work was conducted in partnership with the University of East Anglia. The studies contribute to the global evidence base on RBF and provide lessons on RBF use in the education sector and recommendations for strengthening the link between results and funding.

The assessments looked at the use of RBF particularly by development partners to support government, and there has been an increasing trend in this modality in recent years across the world. This aimed to analyse the degree to which RBF contributed to achieve sector objectives and, ultimately, outcomes for students. The evaluation in Tanzania looked at an established RBF programme called Big Results Now / the Education Program for Results, ongoing since 2013 – with funding from the UK, Sweden, and the International Development Association (IDA). In Mozambique the focus was on the World Bank (2014-2018) Mozambique Public Financial Management for Results Program, as well as use of RBF by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and Germany (KfW). In Nepal the focus was on the School Sector Development Plan (SSDP), 2016-2021, with multiple donors involved including the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, GPE and USAID. In each case a wide set of output, process and outcome targets were included and closely analysed.

The research integrated qualitative and quantitative methodologies, with extensive document review, interviews, and regression analysis of a subset of results. The final outputs of the research form three country reports and a final Synthesis report. The Synthesis aimed to bring together insights from across the three countries, and provides a range of lessons and recommendations for the use of RBF in education as well as globally in other sectors. The reports have been well-received by senior stakeholders at the World Bank and provide a very important evidence base for practitioners in the field and development partners choosing to use RBF approaches, seeking to incentivise improved results or improve education systems more broadly. The two-year study culminated in a well-attended launch event “What types of results are worth buying?” hosted on December 16, 2021, by the World Bank.

The final synthesis report is now available on the Mokoro website.

Last week, Mokoro celebrated International Women’s day by publishing a new blog that reflects on recent WOLTS activities in Mongolia. As we turn our attention to the UN Commission on the Status of Women, which begins today, Elizabeth Daley has written a forward-looking piece on the importance of engaging women and men in the discussions around climate change. In this piece, our WOLTS Team Leader highlights some key examples of the importance of gender inclusivity in land governance in Mongolia and Tanzania. We are pleased that the blog, which is titled: “A sustainable future needs women and men working together for change” is being co-published simultaneously with the Land Portal.

The sixty-sixth session of the Commission on the Status of Women takes place from 14-25 March. It’s theme is ‘achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental and disaster risk reduction policies and programmes’.

To mark this year’s International Women’s Day, Mokoro are delighted to publish a new WOLTS blog by senior team member, Narangerel Yansanjav. The blog, “It will be fun to develop land-use planning, if we do it together”, draws on a series of workshops facilitated by People Centred Conservation (PCC), Mokoro’s Mongolian NGO partner. The online workshops, which brought together over 700 participants comprising local land officers and other government officials, provided the WOLTS team the opportunity to promote more inclusive and gender-equitable decision-making in local land governance processes. The workshops supported the team’s dissemination of new Gender Guidelines which result from a long-running collaboration with the Mongolian government land administration and management agency, ALAMGAC. We are pleased to co-publish this blog simultaneously with the Land Portal.

After adapting to challenges of COVID-19, 2021 turned into a very busy and exciting year for the global WOLTS team. This year has been the culmination of five years of field activities in Mongolia and Tanzania, with a strong focus on disseminating what we have learned.

Our key findings can be found in ‘Women and Community Land Rights: Investing in Local Champions’ which was launched in June via a webinar in collaboration with the Land Portal, the International Land Coalition, and our WOLTS partners HakiMadini, in Tanzania, and People Centered Conservation (PCC), in Mongolia. A new WOLTS blog followed in July – ‘To secure equal rights to land, bring men and women together’.  If you missed the webinar you can still watch the recording here and read the Webinar Report including in Mongolian, Kiswahili and French.

Earlier in 2021, the WOLTS team were delighted to share new ‘gender guidelines’ developed in collaboration with the Mongolian government Agency for Land Administration and Management, Geodesy and Cartography (ALAMGAC). The guidelines have been distributed in all 330 districts of Mongolia – see our March blog which describes the collaborative process, and its broader significance. Our PCC team members have just finished facilitating more than thirty online learning workshops with hundreds of district Land Officers from across Mongolia to introduce the guidelines. These workshops were designed to engage key land administration stakeholders and develop their understanding of how to implement gender-sensitive participatory local land planning.

Please do get in touch with any questions and help us to share our materials widely if you can. Watch this space for WOLTS 2022!

Wishing you all the very best for the holiday season and the coming year.

The Ethiopia WIDE team are pleased to announce the publication by Hurst publishers (UK) of the book, “Youth on the Move: Views from Below on Ethiopian International Migration”, edited by Asnake Kefale and Fana Gebresenbet, in which three chapters based on the WIDE data are authored by WIDE team members. The book is scheduled for publication in September 2021.

We are excited to publish a WOLTS blog written by project team leader, Elizabeth Daley. The blog, ‘To secure equal rights to land, bring men and women together’, is a reflective piece focused on the approach undertaken by the WOLTS project team towards strengthening women’s land rights in Mongolian and Tanzanian pastoralist communities. The blog demonstrates the success of the WOLTS methodology using evidence collected from the latest rounds of feedback on the project’s gender and land champions training programme. It stresses the importance of engaging both women and men equally from beginning to end. This latest blog, which has been simultaneously published on the Land Portal, follows on from the recent WOLTS publication of the ‘Women and Community Land Rights: Investing in Local Champions’ report. Mokoro also hosted a webinar in collaboration with the Land Portal and the International Land Coalition, along with project partners People Centered Conservation (PCC) and HakiMadini, to present findings from the WOLTS experience so far. A recording of the webinar is available online as well as the webinar report in English; French, Mongolian and Kiswahili versions will be published at the beginning of August.

Mokoro is delighted to publish the latest report from the WOLTS Project team; Women and Community Land Rights: Investing in Local Champions. The report, written in collaboration with WOLTS partners People Centered Conservation (PCC) and HakiMadini, presents findings from the project’s work over the past five years in Mongolia and Tanzania, most notably the results of Stage 2 – a 3-year gender and land champions training programme. The publication draws on both qualitative and quantitative evidence to demonstrate the positive impact of the WOLTS Project’s long-term approach to community engagement, as a means to empowering men and women to support their communities as local advocates for land rights and gender equity.

The Women and Community Land Rights: Investing in Local Champions report can be downloaded here. Find other publications on the dedicated WOLTS page here.

The Women and Community Land Rights: Investing in Local Champions webinar took place on 16 June 2021 in collaboration with the Land Portal. The webinar recording and event write-up are available afterwards on the webinar home page here.

You can find details of the event and how to register here

The latest Mokoro newsletter has been sent out via email. You can also read it here.

Mokoro is delighted to share stand-alone online versions of collaborative ‘gender guidelines’ in English and Mongolian with the global land community today. The documents comprise specific technical guidance to strengthen gender-sensitivity and overall inclusiveness of vulnerable groups within Mongolia’s existing public consultations process during medium-term soum development planning, based on the research tools and methodologies developed and used by the Women’s Land Tenure Security project (WOLTS). The ‘gender guidelines’ are the result of a successful collaboration between the Mongolian government Agency for Land Administration and Management, Geodesy and Cartography (ALAMGAC), Mokoro Ltd, and WOLTS project partners, People Centered Conservation (PCC) – a Mongolian NGO – and they have also been included within the latest printing of ALAMGAC’s soum land management planning manual with Mokoro’s support.

Importantly, these new ‘gender guidelines’ provide an example of how to mainstream attention to gender issues – as well as issues for all vulnerable groups – within broader land management planning processes, in a highly participatory, consultative and collaborative way. We hope they will be of interest and relevance to those engaged in local land management planning in other pastoralist regions of the world, as well as to the global community of practice around women’s land rights. We warmly welcome feedback and comments.

The ‘gender guidelines’ are available in English here and in Mongolian here, and the full Mongolian medium-term soum land management planning manual is available in Mongolian here. An article about the collaboration is available here.