The International Centre for Evaluation and Development (ICED) and International Trade and Development (ITAD) have partnered as a team for the EVITA Retrospective Policy Evaluation of Micro Reforms for African Agribusiness (MIRA) and Monitoring and Analyzing Food and Agriculture Policies (MAFAP) Recommended Reforms Assignment under the sponsorship of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), and in support of its Agricultural Development (AgDev) program. The objective of this assignment is to understand the extent to which African governments and their partners initiated, resourced, and sustained the implementation of specific policy and public investments, post adoption. The retrospective policy implementation learning exercise was conducted for the Micro Reforms for African Agribusiness (MIRA), and Monitoring and analyzing six Food and Agriculture Policies (MAFAP) programs, which were implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) respectively. MAFAP was funded over two implementation phases from 2009- 2019, while MIRA has undergone one implementation phase from 2013-2018. Implementation of policy advocacy initiatives for both MAFAP and MIRA programs ended at the point when governments either approved or did not approve recommended reforms. Since then, the Enabling Country Systems (ECS) team in the Agricultural Development unit of BMGF has not conducted any formal investigation to establish ensuing activities by governments and their partners, hence the commissioning of the current retrospective evaluation. The interest in post adoption implementation, which is outside the remit of MAFAP and MIRA programs, is in recognition that the programs’ ultimate impact lies in the implementation of reforms by national governments and their partners, post adoption. We adopted this as a guiding framework for our evaluation, including data collection and analysis. ICED played the lead role in this consortium assignment.
Information is increasingly becoming the most important currency in today’s global economy. With the United Nations predicting that the world population will hit the 9 billion mark by the year 2050 and that during the same period, Africa’s population is expected to double from the current 1.2 billion to 2.5 billion. In view of the above, there is an urgent need to define strategies to enhance Africa’s development Tied to this, there is a need to ensure that there is efficient information and knowledge being generated by researchers and M&E experts to influence decisions by key policymakers. In view of this, there’s therefore an ardent need to ensure that ongoing research and evaluation projects are producing information that is available, accessible, affordable and adoptable.
During the past decade, Africa has seen a huge growth and interest in production of research, monitoring and evaluation. Today, a large number of institutions are investing in production of huge amounts of stimulating research results as well as M&E data. However for many of them, the production of the research report often marks the end of the process, hence missing out on an opportunity to create meaningful change by influencing policy and practice at both the national and institutional level.
To aggravate the situation, there continues to be a big disconnect between generation and creation of new and solid evidence in development systems research efforts and the translation of that same evidence into data-informed policies. Policy makers struggle to find, collate, understand and apply the evidence to support their own decision-making needs, despite existing knowledge. These challenges are not insurmountable. With the right level of support and collaboration between researchers, evaluation experts and decision-makers, the translation of evidence-based research findings into actionable policy and programmatic guidance is an achievable goal.
It is against this background that the International Centre for Evaluation and Development (ICED) in conjunction with Tegemeo, Atai, BASIS and ISSER is organizing a five day Africa Evidence Conference in Nairobi next year to enhance collaboration between researchers and stakeholders and outline clear recommendations on how to ensure Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) and evidence-based research positively impacts regional and national priorities and contributes to the attainment of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Malabo Declaration.
Through this convening, the organizers seek to ensure increased uptake and utilization of research and innovation in evaluation for development to influence policy and drive change at the national, regional and global levels.
The conference will offer an exciting platform for renowned research and evaluation professionals, and development practitioners from national, regional and international organizations to tackle important topics such as Agriculture and Food Systems in sub-Saharan Africa, Climate Change and Environment, Agriculture Risk, Index Insurance and Risk Mitigation, Private Sector in Development, Impact of investment in Agriculture and Food Systems, Innovative Finance, Credit and Savings for Smallholders, Gender and Youth in Agriculture and Food Systems, Youth Employment, National and Local Governance and Accountability, Evidence Synthesis and Impact Evaluation for Policy Making, Knowledge Brokering and Knowledge Translation.
Overall Goal
The Conference will provide a platform for industry stakeholders to discuss strategies for enhancing the dissemination of research findings and ensuring that the process achieves the desired impact. They will provide stakeholders with a platform to do the following :
Highlight the innovative & cutting-edge research and evaluation projects
Support for and scale up uptake of what is working in terms of innovation and best practices.
Use evaluation and research results to contributing to systemic change in African countries.
Conference Objectives
The objectives of the conference are as follows :
Increase the dissemination of high quality evidence of what works, where, and why to develop seed systems, enhance soil health, improve post-harvest storage and strengthen rural institutions and mechanisms for market access for African and South Asian farmers.
Support the dissemination of policy-friendly systematic reviews and summaries of new and existing evidence for interventions to develop seed systems, enhance soil health, improve post-harvest storage and strengthen institutions and mechanisms for market access for African farmers.
Increase awareness amongst the Africans and policy makers, and international development staff of this evidence. Also on the factors that prevent uptake of research and evaluation data in Africa and discuss strategies for scaling up their dissemination and impact.
To achieve a transformation of smallholder agriculture through changing smallholder behaviour to promote wider adoption of improved technologies.
Our Approach
The Conference will have a five-day program as follows: The first two and a half days will be set aside for side events and exhibition while the remaining days will be scientific and technical sessions. Research and development papers will be presented in different sessions and will include the following activities:
Self-organized side events where institutions can present their programmes and galvanize support for their activities.
An exhibition where organizations can exhibit their projects and activities
Plenary sessions to be addressed by a mix of high level speakers and stakeholders
Breakout sessions to address specific issues and topics
A business to business platform where stakeholders attending the Conference can meet each other on the side lines of the event.
Congress Theme
The theme for the Conference, “Evidence to Action” is premised on the understanding that great research and evaluation findings have huge potential to positively influence Africa’s policy decisions and development agenda.
Subthemes
The Sub-Themes are as follows
Research and Evaluation of Agriculture transformation programs in Africa
Public-private partnerships in seed system development
Sub- Sahara Soil Heath and Modern Technology
Agriculture Risk, Index Insurance and Technology
Smart subsidies for technology up-take
Impact Investing, Credit and Savings for Smallholders
Information and Extension: Reaching farmers where they are
Evidence Synthesis and Evaluation Result Generalization
Participants
Conference participants will be drawn from a diversity of stakeholders across Africa who are involved in the research and evaluation sector. This includes the following:
Relevant government ministries’ representatives
Farmer organizations
Representatives from universities
Development think tanks
Research Organizations (National and International)
Development agencies and donor community
Private Sector organizations/companies
Technology promoters/distributors/partners
Planning/Organizing Committees
The Conferences is co-convened by International Centre for Evaluation and Development, Tegemeo, Atai and BASIS.
International Organizing Committee – This committee includes representatives from the partners plus other global institutions.
Local Organizing Committees – These will be drawn from universities, research institutions, non-governmental organizations and development agencies.
Engagements With Development Partners
• This initiative has attracted financial and technical support from key partners in the research and evaluation space including ICED. Organizers are reaching out to other local and global partners to support this great initiative.
Expected Outcomes
Awareness creation on the challenges to research and evaluation in Africa
Linkages and partnerships among the various stakeholders including researchers and technology developers
A Call to Action that clearly spells out what needs to be done to counter the challenges discussed
Establish a mechanism for sourcing for evidence with potential to inform policy and action.
Sustain the mechanism for sharing policy-related evidence with policy makers in the continent.
Continuously nurture a culture of evidence-based decision making.
The theme ‘’Responsibility and Accountability: Strengthening Evidence Generation and Use in Support of Africa Policy Reform and Development Agenda.’’
Aim of the Conference
The aim of the conference will be to identify and discuss accountability and responsibilities of stakeholders in the use of evidence to address developmental needs.
The Concept
“On 1 January 2016, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development — adopted by world leaders in September 2015 at an historic UN Summit — officially came into force. Over the next fifteen years, with these new Goals that universally apply to all, countries will mobilize efforts to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change, while ensuring that no one is left behind.
Sustainable development (SD) is defined in the Brundtland Report as “development that meets the needs and aspirations of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Thus, sustainable development is the organizing principle for sustaining finite resources necessary to provide for the needs of future generations of life on the planet.
This definition implies the two cardinal principles of leadership – Responsibility and Accountability. The responsibility and accountability all countries, poor, rich and middle-income to promote prosperity while protecting the planet.
For Development countries to be able to mobilize efforts to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change, while ensuring that no one is left behind, they should be able to provide leadership in the generating and utilization of evidence that are required for them to assess outcomes and impacts of development interventions and programs, capture the progress, success, and failures of its sustainable development interventions, inform all stakeholders for effective decisions making, strategic planning and risk management, provide accountability to its citizens and to contribute to the broader knowledge and learning in the field of sustainable development.
The type of leadership calls for the high-level responsibility and accountability from both policy makers, development professionals, researchers and evaluators and other stakeholders – that is the willingness to be responsible and accountable for the well-being of the larger community by making decision and developing policy and action that is based on well-informed evidence that are support by irrefutable facts and data. More and more global leadership are embracing the new concept of responsibility and accountability in terms of evidence generation and the use of in support of policy making and development action.
Africa countries cannot be passive spectators in the generating of evidence in their area of 17 sustainable Development Goals. We cannot wait for researchers and evaluators from the Developed countries to take the initiative and responsibility to generate the evidence that are needed to actively track and monitor our progress and attainment of the SDG Goals. There is a global responsibility for all global citizens to contribute to the global development agenda. The modern world is a global village, a global household, a global economic unit of the global community and to develop policies and development actions that contribute to the eradication of poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change, all should be demonstrate leadership, authority and accountability of the evidence generation and its use thereof.
Evidence Generation and Use in Support of Africa Policy Reform and Sustainable Development Agenda is a two-party proposition. The responsibility to provide the research and evaluation agenda and the resources requirement and the holding accountable of those entrusted with the resources to generate the sound, rigorous, and solid evidence that can be used for policy making and practices. While is the responsibility for policy makers and development professionals to demand solid, rigorous and sound evidence for policy making and action to contribute to the SDG goals and should be accountable of the use of these evidence at all time and provide resources needed, it is also the responsibility of researchers and evaluators to supply well documented and systematic reviewed evidence and be accountable to present research and evaluation results and findings in a manner, format, language and time needed and can be used by the policy makers and governments for effective decision making that “meets the needs and aspirations of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”
The JFA III was a four-year multi-funding instrument (2014-2018) provided by ECA partners comprising Denmark, Sweden, Republic of South Korea, and the United Kingdom. The funding was used to support programs and activities in five thematic areas covering macroeconomic policy, regional integration and trade, statistics, gender, and human rights as well as social development. ICED was contracted to conduct the final evaluation of JFA III.
Role of ICED :
ICED conducted an Evaluation to take stock of performance of the thematic areas funded under the agreement by end of December 2018 and compare it to its original intent specifically capturing the progress that was made in relation to ECA’s 2014 – 2018 result framework. The evaluation focused on a strategic reflection on the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, and progress made towards achieving results and possible impact.
ICED Approach :
The Evaluation used a blend several of methodologies and instruments to explore the evaluation questions. Data from the evaluation was derived from both primary and secondary sources.
Team Members
Dr. David Ameyaw
Dr. Andrew Asibye
Client :
United Nations Economic Commission of Africa (UNECA)
Core Area :
Institutional M&E Systems Development and Adaptive Management.
The United Nation Economic Commission of Africa (UNECA) contracted ICED to conduct an end of project evaluation to review and evaluate the implementation of the “Strengthening the capacity of the Africa Peer Review Mechanism countries in conducting effective self-assessment and implementing the National Plans of Action project fully and independently. The focus of the evaluation is to accurately verify if the objectives of the project were attained and if the means used to attain the objective fall in the project scope.
Role of ICED :
ICED assessed the project’s performance and provided recommendations for the future, covering all components and target countries, and determined performance across seven key areas.
ICED Approach :
The evaluation methodology was a mixed method approach to address the evaluation questions. The evaluation utilized both primary and secondary data. Primary data was collected from interviews and interactions with the target groups qualitative in-person and telephone key informant interviews; various focus group sessions; and direct observations.
Quantitative web-based surveys were sent out to other beneficiaries of the program in member countries that the evaluation visit was possible.
Client :
United Nations Economic Commission of Africa (UNECA)
Core Area :
Institutional M&E Systems Development and Adaptive Management.
Functional Area :
Strengthening of gender equality and women’s empowerment within the context of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in the Gender and Women Empowerment Division.
The Executive Leadership Program in Monitoring and Evaluation for Public Sector was designed to bridge the gap between theory and practice to inform planning and policy making. The course was also meant to address gaps in the evaluative capabilities and knowledge and advance evaluation theory and practice in support of sustained and resilient development with specific focus on the challenges and experiences shared by public sector practitioners in the planning and delivery of the national agenda.
ICED Approach :
This course was run in a workshop-style using classroom lectures and executive learning methodologies including group work and individual project development.
To achieve the outcomes full participation was required and participants got the opportunity to share their experiences and best practices regarding designing monitoring and evaluations plans and individual coaching and mentoring in developing action plan for their organizations.
ICED was contracted by World Vision Mozambique to conduct an end of project Evaluation for local procurement school feeding programme which was implemented over a period of two years that is 2017 – 2019
Role of ICED :
ICED assessed the project implementation process, identifying the project achievements and any challenges faced. The evaluation generally contributed to the organizational learning by identifying lessons learnt and emerging good practices.
ICED Approach :
A mixed-methods approach was utilized for this evaluation and that included quantitative and qualitative data collection approaches to enrich the validity of the evaluation results through data triangulation.
Team Members :
Dr. David Ameyaw
Eneida Monteiro
Ventura Mfume
Client :
World Vision International
Core Area :
Institutional M&E Systems Development and Adaptive Management
The overall goal of this assignment was to build the capacity of Kianda Foundation to implement Monitoring and Evaluation and to Develop Monitoring and Evaluation Professionals within the organization.
Objectives :
The overall goal of the assignment was to build the capacity of Kianda Foundation to implement Monitoring and Evaluation and Develop Monitoring and Evaluation Professionals within the organization. The assignment had three specific objectives and they included 1) To develop the Monitoring and Evaluation plan for the current project through a participatory approach with the Kianda Foundation staff. 2) To provide technical support for implementing the Monitoring and Evaluation Plan. 3) To support the development of professional skills in Monitoring and Evaluation among the target Kianda Foundation staff. ICED conducted the training and 80% of the participants indicated that the training achieved its objective.
Role of ICED :
ICED trained the selected Kianda foundation staff on Key aspects of Monitoring and Evaluation and how to Set up M&E systems in their organization.
ICED Approach :
The training was conducted in person and in a participatory manner
The level of effort Survey was meant to; (1) ensure that the USADF grantees have the resources that they need to meet achieve their outputs and goals 2) understand how partners across different countries and portfolios are investing their time, and 3) To improve both USADF training for you and process efficiencies
Objectives :
ICED conducted a level of effort survey on behalf of USADF to its grantees in 21 African countries. The survey was conducted to understand better the level of effort that the teams are putting into the various tasks, so that USADF can (1) ensure you have the resources you need to meet goals and outputs, (2) understand how partners across different countries and portfolios are investing their time, and (3) improve both USADF training for you.
Role of ICED :
ICED executed the entire survey that is from tools design, data collection, data analysis and reporting. A final report was written, and findings presented to USADF management.
ICED Approach :
Key Informant interviews were conducted by selected staff representatives for all the positions in USADF partner organizations in each of the 21 African countries.
Team Members :
Dr. David Ameyaw
Adama Konseiga
Daniel Epeh
Sarah Ameso
Blessing Bmhosva
Client :
United States Africa Development Fund (USADF)
Core Area :
Institutional M&E Systems Development and Adaptive Management
Functional Area :
Capacity Building on Monitoring Evaluation and digital data collection
