The International Centre for Evaluation and Development (ICED) organized a dissemination event on the research project: “Infrastructure’s impact on nutritious diet, women economic empowerment and gender equality (IINDWEGE)” to publicize the project’s findings and products on 1st February 2024 at the Fiesta Royale hotel, Accra Ghana, from 9am to 2pm. The event brought together 105 key stakeholders from diverse backgrounds - policymakers from government institutions, research institutions, international/ non-governmental organizations, civil society organizations (CSOs), market women, business and industry, and the media.
The meeting aimed to present the findings and evidence products from the two-year project (2022-2023) that was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through its Nutritious Food Systems Portfolio.
The two-year IINDWEGE research project (2021-2023) was implemented by the International Centre for Evaluation and Development (ICED) and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF)’s Nutritious Food Systems portfolio. Its primary objective was to assess the impact of physical infrastructure on nutritious diet, women's economic empowerment and gender equality among low-income consumers in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) in sub–Saharan Africa and South Asia.
With the project coming to an end in November 2023, critical pieces of evidence, insights and lessons have been generated by the project’s research team. Therefore, it was important to organize a forum to showcase the achievements of the research team to stakeholders in the infrastructure, gender, and nutrition ecosystems. Aside from developing the EGM, the team has also achieved outputs such as the Evidence-Based Theory of Change (EBToC), Methodology Review and Network Analysis, among others. It is against this backdrop that ICED held a half-day event dissemination event involving 105 key stakeholders.
The achievements and outcomes of the two-year project can be broken down into three components:
The goal of the dissemination was to present the findings and evidence products from the two-year project (2022-2023) that summarizes the impacts of infrastructure on nutritious diets, women's empowerment, and gender equality among low-income consumers in rural areas of low and middle-income countries in Africa South of the Sahara, and South-East Asia.
The half-day event served to achieve the following purposes:
