Many of the Lab’s innovations, tools, and approaches have applications across different sectors. That is why the Lab is collaborating with a range of Agency and private sector partners to address cross-cutting international development issues.  

Lab-wide Priorities

The Lab is focused on integrating the best of our innovations, tools, and approaches across top Agency priorities and Presidential initiatives. We are focused on three priority areas.

• Ebola: Supporting recovery and improving resilience through information, communication and technology and private sector partnerships in the Ebola affected countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea;

• Digital Development for Feed the Future:  Integrating a suite of coordinated digital tools and technologies into Feed the Future activities in order to accelerate the Initiative’s top-line objective of inclusive agricultural sector growth and improved nutrition of women and children.

• Beyond the Gridx:  Working with Power Africa to accelerate access to off-grid energy with a focus on scaling household solar solutions.

Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning

The Lab is committed to being a leader in the use of data and evidence to drive our decision making to reach our goals and mission. We have put systems into place that allow us to support prioritization within our portfolio of investments, and use frequently-collected data to allow for early and ongoing course corrections throughout our programs. We also have developed specific initiatives to enhance monitoring, evaluation and learning across the Agency.

• Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning Innovations (MERLIN):  The Lab, in partnership with the Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning, seeks to test new tools and methodologies that aim to improve the effectiveness of monitoring, evaluation, research and learning.

• The Lab's Evaluation, Research and Learning Plan (2017-19) (ERL): The Lab generates, captures, shares, and uses evidence that helps to understand what works, for whom, and under what circumstances. In order to ensure that this happens, the Lab has created a CLA-driven process to develop and implement a cross-bureau learning agenda - the Lab Evaluation, Research, and Learning (ERL) Plan.

Agency Integration

We have a team dedicated to increasing the integration of science, technology, innovation and partnerships across the Agency to advance USAID’s sustainable development goals and priorities.