WCARO Technical Note # 2: The COVID-19 Response Theory of Change

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Since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, the number of infections continues to soar and an increasing number of countries, including in the West and Central African region, are facing an unprecedented set of health and socio-economic challenges. Given the complexity and magnitude of the crisis, UNICEF’s West and Central Africa Regional Office (WCARO) and Country Offices (COs) have mobilized and engaged in the development of Regional and National Response Plans to counter the COVID-19.

It is on the basis of these plans as well as other UNICEF strategic planning documents related to the current crisis1 that the WCARO Evaluation Unit developed the Theory of Change (ToC) of the response to COVID-19 (page 7). The document provides an important contribution to the current discussions on how to better articulate and evaluate the ongoing response(s) to COVID-19, both within and outside of the West and Central Africa region. To this end, the ToC presented here visualizes not only the expected outputs, outcomes and impacts of the response (both its preparation and implementation phase) but also the assumptions underlying the current response (i.e. the necessary and sufficient conditions for the desired changes in the response to take place).

The COVID-19 Response ToC is intended to support the achievement of two main purposes:

• Enhancing the accountability of the COVID-19 response to both the development partners funding the response and the affected populations whom UNICEF and its partners are expected to serve (the ToC provides a visualization of the response intended results and therefore provides a basis against which the performance of the response could be evaluated);
• Fostering organizational learning (both amongst UNICEF, national governments and other in-country and regional partners) about the aspects of the COVID-19 response that are working well (including why, for whom and under what circumstances) and/or need to be improved.