Evaluation of DFID DRC’s Private Sector Development programme

Despite its economic potential, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remains desperately poor. Decades of conflict and instability have taken their toll, and 69% of the population live in poverty. There is a lack of opportunities for people to lift themselves out of poverty. Lack of access to credit, widespread corruption, poor infrastructure, logistics, and limited access to land hold back the growth of the private sector and trap people in chronic poverty.

DFID has initiated an innovative Private Sector Development (PSD) programme in the DRC. This is an ambitious, large-scale programme seeking to ‘improve the incomes of the poor’ in an extremely complex, conflict-affected environment. The PSD programme is working with private sector stakeholders to provide well-functioning markets and deliver a business environment that fosters economic opportunities for poor people.

The DSU is a central part of this programme, improving implementation and increasing the impact of interventions by providing annual reviews, evaluations, and learning and adaptation activities.

We will be publishing a number of documents on this page which are designed to help others learn from the experiences gained delivering this ground-breaking programme. This will include a series of 'learning briefs' that have been produced to summarise some of the key themes identified during the course of our evaluation work.

If you would like to be kept updated about the work of the Decision Support Unit, and receive copies of our briefings, as they are published, then please sign up to our mailing list.

We would like to thank Andrzej Dabkowski, Yadaira Orsini, Stephen Jones, Paul Jasper, Stevan Lee, Hamish Colquhoun, Laura Watson, Donna Loveridge, Arlette Nyembo, Joseph Holden, Matthew Savage, Sadia Ahmed, and Charles Mesa for their work on the project.