From evidence to lasting impact: FID and partners at the SOR4D Research Conference in Bern 

Organised by SOR4D – Solution-oriented Research for Development, a joint initiative of the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), FID’s new strategic partner, the conference brought together diverse perspectives on how research can contribute to addressing complex development challenges.

FID and its partners contributed to two sessions, focusing on very different sectors – education and local public finance – but sharing a common question: what does it take for an innovation that works to generate lasting impact at scale?

From evidence to adoption and scale in education

The first discussion, organized by the FID and moderated by Manuela Bärtschi from the SDC, explored the journey from evidence to government adoption, scale-up and, ultimately, strong and lasting impact in education. The experience of Kilonga, a FID-supported programme implemented by CARE in Madagascar to improve access to menstrual health and hygiene, showed how rigorous impact evidence can provide a strong foundation for policy dialogue.

Mariachiara Iannuzzi, researcher at the Paris School of Economics, stressed that "having strong evidence is necessary" while highlighting the importance of trust, shared understanding and strong institutional relationships in turning evidence into policy.

The discussion also highlighted the importance of continuing to learn as an intervention scales. STARS in Rwanda, presented by Leodomir Mfura of Georgetown University’s Initiative on Innovation, Development, and Evaluation (gui²de), provides a concrete example. Following an initial impact evaluation, the programme was progressively refined through a series of experiments conducted with the Rwandan government before being integrated into national teacher performance contracts.

The STARS experience shows how government ownership, iterative testing and strong institutional coordination can go hand in hand.

For Patrick Premand of the World Bank, this requires moving away from a model in which researchers produce evidence and policymakers receive it afterwards. “ We need to shift away from a model where we separate the production of evidence by researchers from the decision-making process by policymakers,” he argued. Instead, researchers and policymakers should jointly identify the questions that matter and generate evidence as programmes are implemented.

From a similar perspective, Anne Thibault of FID highlighted that FID encourages project leaders to consider the potential for scale from the outset. This is one of its three selection criteria, alongside potential impact and cost-effectiveness.

Beyond technology: what makes public-sector innovation scalable?

The second FID contribution, together with the Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI), focused on a very different challenge: mobilising property tax revenues through digital innovation.

Camille Barras (LoGRI) presented preliminary findings from an ongoing comparative study supported by FID, examining the scale-up of georeferenced property registration and valuation systemsn The Gambia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Benin. The approach combines satellite or aerial imagery, short digital field surveys and simplified mass property valuation. In Freetown, for example, a comprehensive property tax register was created in less than a year and property tax revenues subsequently tripled. In the Dakar region, an FID-supported project increased property registration from 19% to 92%, while tax payments rose from 9% to 24%.

But the study goes beyond the effectiveness of the technology itself, asking why similar innovations scale successfully in some contexts while progress is slower in others. Preliminary findings from The Gambia and Senegal point to the importance of institutional arrangements, political leadership, incentives and sustained collaboration with public administrations. The collaboration between FID and LoGRI seeks to combine rigorous impact evidence with political economy analysis and sector expertise to better understand these conditions. This was also the key message from Mélodie Beaujeu.

First common lessons from the discussions

Across both discussions, one common lesson emerged: demonstrating that an innovation works, while essential, is only the beginning of the journey. Whether the challenge is improving learning outcomes or strengthening local government revenues, successful scale-up depends on much more than the innovation itself. It requires partnerships with public institutions, appropriate incentives, political ownership, sustainable financing and continued learning as programmes enter new contexts and reach larger populations.

For FID, this is central to its mission: supporting promising innovations, generating rigorous evidence on their impact, and understanding what is needed to turn evidence into more effective and sustainable public policy. As Mélodie Beaujeu put it during the discussion: “The impact evaluation tells us what works; this study helps us understand what makes it scalable.”

The SOR4D Research Conference provided an opportunity to bring these questions into dialogue with a broader community of researchers from diverse disciplines and leaders from development organisations.