Impact evaluation is an essential tool to measure and quantify the causal impact of IFC-supported projects on development results.
Impact evaluation enables IFC to help our clients demonstrate their economic and social impact credibly to their stakeholders. By scientifically articulating the development impacts of its initiatives and projects to local stakeholders and policy makers, IFC provides visibility and transparency.
IFC impact evaluations use rigorous experimental and quasi-experimental methods, and high-quality measurement tools, to quantify selected projects’ success across multiple development outcomes. A key feature of these methods is the ability to establish unambiguous cause-and-effect relationships – by accurately attributing impacts to receiving the project or program.
What Methods Does IFC Use for Impact Evaluation?
IFC uses broadly two types of impact evaluation designs: randomized controlled trials (RCT) and quasi-experimental designs.
Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs)
Evaluations using RCTs randomly assign the program, product or innovation – at the individual, household, firm or geographic level. An important feature of an RCT is that both the beneficiaries (often called the treatment group) and those who do not benefit (the control group) are drawn at random from the same baseline pool of eligible participants. Thus, any difference between the treatment and the control group at the end of the trial can be attributed to the intervention being randomized. RCTs are widely employed in the private sector for testing various elements of business models, including product and marketing features.
Quasi-Experimental Methods
Quasi-experimental methods can be used to identify impacts of a program, product, or innovation when random assignment is not feasible. For a well-defined group of program beneficiaries, these methods construct a comparison group using statistical methods and any near-random features of roll-out or design. Regression discontinuity design, difference-in-differences, and matching are commonly used examples.
Examples of Our Work
Measuring Outcomes in MSME Finance: IFC is a leading investor in MSME finance in EMDEs, and a standard bearer for responsible financial inclusion. As part of a comprehensive research and measurement agenda on IFC’s role in supporting access to finance for MSMEs, this project is conducting a quasi-experimental evaluation with a large financial institution in Bangladesh. The project seeks to estimate the impact of access to finance for MSMEs, employing the use of instrumental variables for identification.
Access to Capital and Women’s Entrepreneurship: A recent systematic review led by IFC and World Bank researchers identified 27 rigorous impact evaluations of access to credit or grant programs on outcomes for women-owned businesses and drew out important lessons for intervention design and policy.
Sourcing2Equal Colombia: IFC’s Sourcing2Equal (S2E) Program aims to facilitate and unlock market access for women-owned small and medium enterprises (WSMEs) by offering a variety of capacity-building services to increase WSMEs’ access to private sector procurement opportunities. The impact evaluation rigorously evaluates S2E Colombia’s WSME capacity-building solutions, using in a phased-in randomized controlled trial which compares WSMEs who were randomized to receive the intervention early on versus those who were randomly assigned to wait to receive it later. The study is a collaboration between IFC and World Bank researchers.
India AgTech: IFC’s India Agriculture Technology (AgTech) advisory service project is designed to support the scaling-up of AgTech startups in three states in India. The impact evaluation program explores why and how farmers in India adopt modern technologies supplied by AgTech companies, and the potential impacts such technologies have on farmers. The evaluation seeks to generate rigorous evidence on how improved access to AgTech services influences farmers' resource allocation decisions, agricultural practices, and ultimately their productivity and yields. It combines a quasi-experimental method with an RCT to evaluate whether targeted encouragement interventions increase farmer adoption of post-harvest warehousing, credit facilities, and related AgTech services.
Smartphone Access: IFC is supporting privatizing the telecommunication sector in Ethiopia to facilitate the entry of new market players, mobilize private capital, and reduce Ethiopia’s lag in terms of reach, penetration, and regulation. As part of the effort to expand internet access and reach underserved communities, IFC’s client has introduced a device financing scheme to reduce the cost of access to entry-level smartphones in Ethiopia. IFC is implementing a randomized controlled trial evaluation focused on how the pay-as-you-go device financing scheme, which is aimed at making smartphones more affordable, can improve the welfare of households and the productivity of enterprises in Ethiopia.
Distributed Access Through Renewable Energy Scale-Up (DARES): Mission 300 is an ambitious World Bank Group-African Development Bank initiative to connect 300 million people in Africa to electricity by 2030. As part of Mission 300, the World Bank, the Federal Government of Nigeria, IFC and MIGA have launched the DARES initiative to support electricity access via private providers, including via solar-powered mini grids. The impact evaluation is using a randomized controlled trial and a regression discontinuity design to generate rigorous causal evidence on the economic, social, and environmental impacts of electrification via mini grids. The study is a collaboration between IFC and World Bank researchers, and is a product of the Learn, Adapt and Scale (LEADS) initiative.
Market Accelerator for Green Construction (MAGC): The Market Accelerator for Green Construction (MAGC) Program, a partnership between IFC and the UK Government, aims to boost the uptake of green building designs and technologies in emerging markets across 25 countries. IFC’s impact evaluation includes pilot testing and a refining stage of the evaluation methods for each local context. Four layers of data are gathered and analyzed over an 18-month monitoring period during the main phase through December 2026, including i) building construction data, ii) residential energy and water meter data, iii) household survey data, and iv) energy real-time monitoring data through smart sensors installed in residential units.
Designing Power Markets in Emerging Market and Developing Economies (EDMEs): In 2024, IFC published a rigorous analytical report on Repurposing Power Markets – The Path to Sustainable and Affordable Energy for All.
Investment Policy Reforms and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Inflows: a recent IFC study uses a Synthetic Control Model (SCM) to assess whether a series of investment policy reforms in Ethiopia have successfully attracted FDI. The study shows that investment policy reforms contributed to a significant FDI inflow in Ethiopia, compared to what would have occurred in the absence of these policies.
Expanding Opportunities for Women in Emerging Markets through Private Equity and Venture Capital: Private equity and venture capital are important sources of funding for companies, helping to shape their development at all stages. A 2025 IFC report, Expanding Opportunities for Women in Emerging Markets through Private Equity and Venture Capital finds that these funds could do more to channel capital to women-owned and run companies. The study also found that if these funds had more women making investment decisions, more funding would flow to women-owned businesses—and that this would not come at the price of lowering their portfolios’ financial performance.
Last updated: December 2025