Analyses for Activities

To ensure activities are evidence-based, design should use or commission various analyses. These ensure all aspects of your activity are grounded in the most recent contextual realities of the operating environment. There are several analyses required and others most useful for trade activities.

Before commissioning any analysis, a first step should be to review analyses prepared for CDCS design, projects, or other activities. Second, there are three required analyses for activity design: gender, environment, and climate risk. Relevant ADS guidance for each is included in the links to the right, along with a list of all analyses.

For trade related activities, there are three notable assessments that can be done during activity design. One is the trade facilitation gap analysis, which benchmarks a country’s readiness based on criteria for accession into the World Trade Organization. The second are two different approaches to assess the e-commerce landscape of a country or region. One approach is the Digital Economy Country Assessment (DECA) which is designed to give a broad, holistic overview of the digital ecosystem. The second is the Systems Analytic Framework for the Digital Economy (SAF-DE), which can be used for deep dives into specific digital economy-related issues. The DECA and SAF-DE have significant topical overlap, but differ in scope. The SAF-DE is designed to be a more narrow, focused assessment with possible topic areas including service liberalization, trade logistics, private commercial law, and small and medium-sized enterprise preparedness. The SAF-DE is currently offered through EMD, which supports USAID in tackling challenges related to the digital economy, trade capacity building, private sector development, and a business-enabling environment.

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For more information, please contact Paul Fekete.