Rural Road Rehabilitation Evaluation Plan (Memo)

The Millennium Challenge Account with Armenia (MCA) aims to increase household income and reduce poverty in rural Armenia through improved performance of the country’s agricultural sector. MCA planned to achieve this goal through an integrated, nationwide initiative to improve major components of rural infrastructure, focusing on rural roads and the irrigation system, supplementing these infrastructure improvements with training in agricultural practices. By improving living standards among rural residents, these investments could in turn lead to economic growth in rural areas and throughout the country as a whole. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has commissioned a rigorous impact evaluation to separately examine each of the three main components (roads, irrigation, and agricultural training/support) of its compact with Armenia (the “Compact”).

This memo describes our updated design for evaluating the impact of roads that were planned to be included in MCA’s Rural Road Rehabilitation Project (RRRP). The original evaluation design planned to compare roads selected for rehabilitation to road projects that were considered but not selected for rehabilitation by MCA. The evaluation design would have leveraged the systematic process MCA used to select roads for rehabilitation to estimate credible program impacts.