Learning is at the heart of AgResults

This toolkit is a practical guide for agricultural development practitioners who are interested in using Pay-for-Results prize competitions to stimulate new markets for agricultural technologies and engage the private sector for scale-up. It draws upon the experience of AgResults, which has designed and implemented prize competitions around the world since 2013.

Since 2013, AgResults has been designing and implementing agricultural prize competitions to encourage the private sector to "solve" a market failure and work toward a defined goal to receive a monetary award. In this cross-cutting learning document, AgResults presents 12 key takeaways based on its experience with prize concept design and sourcing; launch and marketing; and running a prize competition.

This assessment by External Evaluator Abt Associates reflects the experience of competitors in the Brucellosis Vaccine Challenge Project from mid-2018 to mid-2019. Most competitors reported that the competition had helped advance their B. melitensis vaccine R&D. However, many of them anticipated challenges completing the safety and efficacy trials due to resource constraints.

This baseline report by External Evaluator Abt Associates describes the Brucellosis vaccine landscape at baseline. Evaluators found that the vaccine market is weak and no new vaccines to control Brucellosis have been developed in recent years. Evaluators also found that the Milestone 1 prize seemed to incentivize some new entities to initiate Brucellosis vaccine R&D.

This presentation from the 2019 Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock (GASL) Multi-Stakeholder Partnership (MSP) meeting introduces AgResults' framework, which uses prize competitions to encourage the private sector to overcome market challenges. The World Bank and AgResults Secretariat share lessons from designing and implementing competitions to strengthen livestock health and productivity: a global Brucellosis vaccine competition, a vaccine competition to address Foot and Mouth Disease in Eastern Africa, and a Tanzania-based competition to boost dairy productivity.

The AgResults Prize Concept Review Framework assesses concepts for validity as a prize competition. The framework comprises four key questions on the (a) market failure, (b) missions impact, (c) prize design, and (d) enabling environment. 

This Lessons Learned article explores the experience of AgResults during the Brucellosis Challenge design, launch, and Year 1 implementation phases.

The evaluationdesign for the Brucellosis Vaccine Challenge Project lays out the approach to assessing the project's influence in stimulating the development of an improved Brucella melitensis vaccine. Evaluators used a qualitative assessment and counterfactual disease study to examine technology development and used cost-effectiveness simulations as well.