Evaluation of the BMZ Emergency COVID-19 Support Programme

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are widespread and directly or indirectly affected countries worldwide. At the beginning of this evaluation, in December 2021, the pandemic and its challenges at national and international level were still ongoing.

As a result of the pandemic, the global economy contracted by 3.5% in 2020 and had only partly recovered by 2021. It is estimated that extreme poverty rose again in 2020 for the first time in over 20 years and that around 71 million people were newly pushed into extreme poverty. Under these circumstances, it seems unlikely that the SDGs can be achieved.

To counteract these negative effects, governments around the world launched extensive response programmes. Whereas industrial countries invested an average of 8% of their GDP in 2020 to reduce the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, emerging and developing countries spent less than 4% and 2% respectively of their GDP in the same period.

In April 2020, the BMZ launched the CSP with a total volume of EUR 4.8 billion to finance measures to prevent, detect and mitigate the pandemic and its socio-economic consequences.

• Phase 1: Contribute to accountability through a rapid assessment of the relevance and efficiency of the CSP with regard to distribution channels, instruments, recipients and content
• Phase 2: Perform a sound assessment of the effectiveness, efficiency, coherence and relevance of CSP's distribution channels and instruments; to learn for future crises

The objective of the DEval evaluation is to analyse the instruments and measures that were used by the COVID-19 Emergency Response Programme between April 2020 and December 2021.

The DEval evaluation was split into two phases. The first phase comprises a portfolio analysis that assesses the relevance and efficiency of the programme. This portfolio analysis is based on the assessment of monitoring data, and on findings from a systematic literature analysis regarding distribution channels, instruments and topics.

In the second phase, additional analyses were conducted regarding the programme’s relevance and efficiency as well as its effectiveness and coherence. The evaluation includes a broad data collection including a standardised virtual survey among all partner countries reached through the CSP, as well as qualitative and quantitative surveys in selected case study countries (Burkina Faso, Jordan and Lebanon), and a document study.