Author: Guy Hutton, Innate Values Ltd
REACH is an international research programme with a goal of improving water security and climate resilience for 10 million people in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia by 2025. REACH is a consortium led by the University of Oxford with research observatories in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Kenya. Funding of £22.5 million was provided by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).
This present report aims to provide an independent input to the evaluation workstream in REACH’s programme closure plan agreed with FCDO, and includes updates on programme impacts and outcomes since the 2023 Strategic Impact Review, an assessment of value for money (VfM), and a brief review of the theory of change and the programme’s governance and management.
The REACH Strategic Impact Review (2023) concluded that 10.42 million people on the ground had already benefitted from REACH, and an update in February 2024 concluded that REACH achieved 5.79 million direct and 3.59 million indirect International Climate Finance (ICF) beneficiaries. A future 28.64 million people were also projected to benefit from REACH. Since then, some emerging developments in five projects are expected to expand REACH’s impact, amounting to a potential further 91.50 million beneficiaries, bringing the estimated future beneficiaries to 120.14 million.
In terms of leveraged funds from partners, an estimated £92 million was estimated to have been leveraged through REACH influence until end-2023. Since then, one additional major project – the BRIGHT project (Basin Management Support for Resilient Inclusive Growth and Harmonized Transformation) – has been leveraged in Ethiopia, which is worth £39 million. The addition of BRIGHT brings the total leveraged funds to £131 million.
The VfM analysis which drew on selected efficiency indicators demonstrated that a high degree of value for money was achieved by the REACH programme. Much of this would not have been achieved with a traditional research programme, especially one of a short time duration. Indeed, the close relationships developed with practitioners in the programme countries and the funding of a ten-year research programme to allow research to be translated into policies and programmes on the ground – were strong enabling factors for REACH to achieve and surpass its targets.
