Assessing the Additional Impact of NGO-Promoted Savings Groups: A Counterfactual Evaluation in Eastern Equatoria, South Sudan

However, additionality is weakened where NGO support creates dependency, where group leaders capture decisions, where groups divert loans away from productive use, and where weak markets reduce returns to agricultural investment. Objective: This article measures the additionality of NGO-promoted community saving and lending groups in Eastern Equatoria, South Sudan. Methods: The article converts thesis-based evidence on Community Group Saving and Lending mechanisms into a counterfactual evaluation paper, using the survey evidence of 85 respondents and the qualitative interview evidence of 17 participants as a basis for reconstructing comparison logic. The paper applies a mixed-methods evaluation design. Results: Additionality is understood as the net change in rural financial behaviour and agricultural investment that can reasonably be attributed to NGO facilitation after accounting for what would probably have happened without the intervention. Conclusion: The article asks whether NGO promotion simply formalises savings practices that communities would have developed anyway, or whether it creates a measurable increment in savings discipline, credit access, agricultural input purchase, technology adoption, and household resilience.