Localized Solutions to Improve Remote Monitoring during COVID-19 Pandemic

In hard-to-reach areas or areas where USAID staff are prohibited from visiting, third party monitors - usually skilled data collectors based in or with access to these areas, can be deployed to be USAID’s “eyes and ears.” Third-party monitoring (TPM) verifies activities, collects contextual details, and obtains beneficiary feedback through physical observations and interviews with beneficiaries and stakeholders. The onset of COVID-19 and the subsequent restrictions on in-person interactions made traditional TPM impossible and necessitated adapting to innovative monitoring strategies to ensure TPM objectives were achieved within the pandemic context.

In 2020, USAID/KEA, through the Mission Support to Journey to Self-Reliance Pivot (MSP), adopted mixed-methods remote monitoring to verify two USAID interventions in Kenya, the results of which had varying degrees of success. The strategy comprised Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and phone interviews to collect beneficiary feedback. However, the response rate for the first IVR survey was low. Learning from the experience, in the subsequent remote monitoring, MSP adapted and employed radio messaging and interactions through local mother-tongue radio stations leading to a dramatic increase in the response rate.

While USAID and its Implementing Partners could adopt cost-efficient solutions based on lessons learned during the pandemic, such as remote monitoring and IVR, these solutions must be embedded in the local context to be effective. Indeed, in the Kenyan context, MSP discovered that local radio is a trusted source of information that helped build community awareness and confidence to respond to the new innovative IVR technology.