Evaluating Gavi’s strategies, policies and programmes: what lessons can be drawn from Gavi’s Annual Evaluation Report 2023?
Gavi’s second Annual Evaluation Report highlights key lessons from recent evaluations, and showcases ongoing evaluation activities. Here’s what the report found.
- 24 June 2024
- 4 min read
- by Esther Saville
On 30 May 2024, Gavi published its Annual Evaluation Report 2023, which provides an overview on how evaluations conducted in 2023 have been instrumental in continuing to provide evidence needed to implement Gavi’s strategy for 2021–2025.
As per Gavi’s Learning System Strategy, evidence-based learning is a core element embedded in everything Gavi does. It helps us to continuously adapt and improve on how best to achieve our mission: to save lives and protect people’s health by increasing equitable and sustainable use of vaccines. Conducting evaluations are one of the ways to generate evidence for course-correction, scaling of best practices and innovations, and cross-Alliance learning.
This evaluation highlighted the importance of simplifying and streamlining funding levers and related guidance, tools and processes, as well as the need for a robust and regularly monitored operationalisation plan.
The report showcases evaluations from 2023 such as the Evaluation of Gavi’s Initial Response to COVID-19 and the first phase of the COVAX Facility and COVAX AMC evaluation, which have provided key recommendations to improve future pandemic preparedness and response.
These evaluations emphasised the need to ensure that mechanisms are in place for equitable global vaccine distribution during a pandemic response, as well as the importance of maintaining a focus on routine immunisation.
Lessons from both evaluations informed decisions taken by the Board regarding Gavi’s role in PPPR (pandemic prevention, preparedness and response), with significant resources allocated for the African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator (AVMA), Day Zero Financing Facility for Pandemics (DZF), coalition readiness and the Big Catch-up.
Further learnings are expected from the second and final phase of the COVAX evaluation, which was undertaken in 2023 as Gavi’s first joint evaluation across Alliance and COVAX Pillar partners.
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Another evaluation that was completed in 2023 is the Evaluation of the operationalisation of Gavi’s strategy through policies, programmatic guidance and use of funding levers.
This evaluation highlighted the importance of simplifying and streamlining funding levers and related guidance, tools and processes, as well as the need for a robust and regularly monitored operationalisation plan. Planned actions include engaging the Gavi Board on the organisation’s operating model in 6.0, delegating grant management decision-making to country-facing leadership levels, and creating a roadmap to guide strategy operationalisation with clearly defined accountability.
Other important evaluations were ongoing in 2023, such as the Mid-term evaluation of Gavi’s 2021-2025 strategy and the Evaluation of Gavi’s contribution to reaching zero-dose and missed communities (Zero-Dose Evaluation). These also generated insightful recommendations for course-correction of Gavi’s strategy, as well as supporting the planning of Gavi’s next strategy, which will run from 2026–2030, so that Gavi and Alliance partners can continue to work with supported countries on leaving no one behind with immunisation.
For example, one of the key strategic implications that emerged from the first phase of the Zero-Dose Evaluation, a multi-year evaluation taking place from 2022 to 2025, is the need to make a stronger case for enhancing harmonisation efforts and opportunities with key global partners for health system strengthening (HSS), primary health care (PHC) and Universal Health Coverage (UHC), for instance through pooled funding.
The report also features the evaluation of the Mapping for Health (M4H) project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which provided evidence that supports scaling up and use of geospatial technology in immunisation programmes, and the Evaluation of Gavi's Independent Review Committee (IRC), which led to significant efforts to improve grant application review processes.
In response to recommendations from the IRC evaluation, efforts have already been initiated to tailor review processes according to the different levels of risk and complexity of applications, intended for a more streamlined process for low-risk and low-complexity applications and a more in-depth, iterative review of highly complex applications.
We invite you to consult our report to learn more about these evaluations and about other important evaluations that took place in 2023. Our report will also provide you with further information on Gavi’s evaluation function, upcoming evaluations, on our strategies to promote the use of the evidence generated by evaluations, and on our efforts to enhance the credibility, independence and utility of our evaluations.
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