The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) provides economic development and humanitarian assistance to foreign countries around the world. For more than 30 years, DevTech has worked closely with USAID to monitor the performance and evaluate the impact of USAID and USAID programs through robust data collection and quality research.
In 2004, USAID implemented a promotional strategy to spread awareness of USAID and USAID programs in Senegal and has since conducted regular national surveys to assess the visibility of these programs among the Senegalese people. In 2008, USAID administered a comprehensive national opinion poll on the visibility of USAID in terms of geographical coverage and population groups. Then, in order to assess visibility of USAID over time, the organization enlisted the help of DevTech’s experts to conduct a follow-up study in 2010. The goal of the study was to evaluate the overall perception of USAID in Senegal across sex, age, income, education level, occupation, ethnicity and region.
Upon evaluation, we found that:
- Further promotional efforts should be directed toward women and those with lower levels of education, as they are least likely to be aware of USAID and its programs. 90.3% of respondents stated that they were aware of foreign assistance to Senegal but 46% of respondents did not know about USAID specifically.
- Higher awareness of USAID will contribute to a better image of the United States among the Senegalese people. About 90% of respondents had a favorable opinion of USAID and said that foreign aid cultivated a more favorable opinion of the United States.
- In a change from the 2008 study that showed that more rural dwelling people were aware of USAID, the 2010 study showed near equal awareness between rural (90.5%) and urban (90%) dwellers.
With the help of our experts, USAID was able to assess the visibility of its programs over time, identify target populations on whom to focus their future promotional efforts, and more effectively implement development assistance in Senegal. In our 32+ years of M&E experience, DevTech has successfully managed and implemented more than 250 monitoring and evaluation activities in more than 100 countries across complicated socioeconomic contexts and non-permissive environments. Accordingly, when faced with the challenge of evaluating the visibility of USAID’s large scale international development efforts, DevTech handled it with precision and agility. To learn more about this project and DevTech’s capabilities, please visit the page for this project here.
