In December 2022, the government of Côte d’Ivoire passed a new law mandating the evaluation of public policies. The Ministry of Economy, Planning and Development (MEPD), tasked with implementing the law, sought to build internal capacity on rigorous impact evaluation. J-PAL Europe and ENSEA, Côte d’Ivoire’s National School of Statistics and Applied Economics, seized this opportunity to launch an ambitious collaboration targeting students and civil servants. The partnership includes:
- Supporting ENSEA students in taking Data, Economics, and Design of Policy (DEDP) MicroMasters classes
- Developing an in-service certificate for Ivorian civil servants on public policy evaluation
- Supporting the creation of a master’s program in impact evaluation that will leverage content from the DEDP MicroMasters
The partnership aims to foster evidence-informed policymaking and promote research collaborations aligned with government priorities. In October 2024, ENSEA was officially welcomed as a founding member of ADEPT.
PILLAR 1: Supporting ENSEA students in taking DEDP classes
We offer targeted support to ENSEA students in taking DEDP MicroMasters classes. To remove learning barriers, we translate subtitles into French, offer tutoring sessions and provide scholarships. Through this effort ENSEA and ADEPT aim to offer students a powerful academic and professional signaling tool in the development space, an opportunity for credit recognition at pathway universities that can accelerate their progress towards earning an in-person degree and exposure to graduate-level courses taught in English by MIT faculty and J-PAL affiliates and staff.
PILLAR 2: Launching a Civil Servants Certificate
Every year ~60 civil servants from 10+ ministries are trained at ENSEA on impact evaluation, with a focus on RCT. The program combines three in-person events and an online semester-long DEDP course allowing civil servants to earn certification from ENSEA, J-PAL, and a course certificate from MITx. One event is an incubator where learners receive hands-on advice to workshop evaluation priorities from their ministries. This upgrades the skills of practitioners and contributes to the emergence of promising collaborations between researchers and policymakers. Training events are co-led by J-PAL and ENSEA faculty for mutual learning and eventual transfer of ownership.
PILLAR 3: Creating a Blended Master’s at ENSEA
ADEPT is supporting ENSEA in the development of a blended master’s program in impact evaluation. The program will leverage ENSEA’s existing courses and content from the DEDP MicroMasters and is currently being designed.