The Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE) seeks to create decent employment opportunities for 200,000 young people, with a specific commitment to ensuring that at least half of the beneficiaries are women.
Our evaluation aims to provide actionable insights and strategic learning for programme adaptation.
Our role
Itad is leading the independent evaluation of the Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE) and is responsible for the overall design and implementation of the evaluation approach. As the evaluation partner, we bring expertise in assessing complex development programmes to generate actionable insights and strategic learning.
The evaluation is designed to support adaptive management within CFYE, provide accountability to the funder (the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and contribute to broader evidence on what works in promoting quality youth employment through challenge fund mechanisms.
About the Challenge Fund for Youth Employment
Funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and managed by Palladium, the CFYE is a multi-country initiative aimed at addressing youth unemployment in Africa and the Middle East.
The programme adopts a private sector-driven model by supporting innovative and scalable projects that either expand the availability of jobs or improve their quality. Grants are awarded through competitive challenge fund calls, and projects are co-invested across 11 countries.
The CFYE not only provides financial support but also offers targeted technical assistance to enhance project outcomes and align them with the programme’s objectives. This portfolio-based approach ensures strategic support and monitoring of individual projects. By prioritising inclusivity, quality, and sustainability, the programme aims to catalyse structural changes in labour markets and stimulate broader economic impact.
Overall, CFYE serves as a dynamic mechanism to harness private sector innovation in solving persistent employment challenges among youth, particularly young women, in diverse and often complex regional contexts.
Our role encompasses a full suite of evaluation services across the life of the Fund.
This includes the design and application of a robust, theory-based evaluation framework that captures performance and impact at project, programme, and portfolio levels.
Specifically, Itad is conducting a comprehensive document review, undertaking primary data collection both remotely and in-country, and integrating secondary data sources to construct a retrospective baseline.
These data are analysed and synthesised using mixed-methods approaches, including contribution analysis, to understand the extent and nature of CFYE’s impact.
Methods and approaches
The evaluation uses a theory-based and multi-level approach to assess the Fund’s design, performance, and impact.
It is structured around two main phases: midline and endline. Data is collected through a mix of primary and secondary sources, both remotely and in-country.
Key methods include:
- Case Studies: both in-depth and light-touch case studies are used to represent the portfolio and serve as the main units of analysis.
- Organisational Review: conducted to understand how the Fund is managed and delivered.
- Reconstructed Baseline: created using secondary data to provide context for evaluating change over time.
- Contribution Analysis: used at endline to assess the extent to which the CFYE contributed to observed outcomes.
The evaluation explores impact at three levels:
- Project Level: reconstructing project-level theories of change (ToCs) and comparing them to the overall programme ToC.
- Programme Level: assessing alignment with and implementation of the programme’s ToC.
- Portfolio Level: identifying broader causal pathways and lessons for similar challenge funds.
The evaluation addresses six core questions related to relevance, coherence, efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability, and inclusivity, aiming to generate both real-time learning and broader strategic insights.
Outcomes and impact
The ultimate aim of Itad’s work is to assess the relevance, coherence, efficiency, effectiveness, inclusivity, and sustainability of the Fund’s interventions.
By delivering rigorous, evidence-based findings through midline and endline evaluations, we aim to inform the Fund’s ongoing strategy, accelerate its impact, and generate valuable learning for policymakers, practitioners, private sector actors, and donors engaged in employment generation and challenge fund programming globally.
