The International Centre for Evaluation and Development (ICED) held a 5-year strategy planning session in March, 2022. At the time of the event, ICED had expanded across geographies, funding partners, type of projects, and impact within the last five (5) years of its inception and its leadership is taking a step back to define even more aspirational targets for the next five (5) years. The session provided a platform for ICED and its partners to co-create robust strategies that align with accelerating its impact in Africa.
ICED consulted its Board of Directors, community of partners, key sector experts, thought leaders and its staff to develop the 5-year strategy. These stakeholders were best placed to assist in identifying the growth opportunities, gaps, challenges and lessons for consideration in the development of the new strategy.
ICED is an international, independent and not-for-profit “think-and-do-tank”, specializing in innovative research, monitoring, evaluation, and learning for development. ICED believes that MEL plays an important role in enabling robust and sustainable development by generating knowledge that can strengthen accountability, planning, budgeting, advocacy, and risk management. Its mission is to enhance the generation, synthesis, and uptake of evidence for better policy and action through Innovative Research, Monitoring, and Evaluation.
Although ICED has achieved much and its mission remains relevant, the rapid evolution of the ecosystem in which it operates and its internal factors contributed to generate gaps in achieving its objectives. It is imperative for ICED to retool itself and refresh its approaches and partnerships in the next phase to remain relevant in dealing with the challenges of the current times, to maximize its critical role in informing and shaping development policies, strategies and initiatives and to attract resources. This it should do whilst upholding diversity, context and cultural sensitivity, leadership localization, accountability and value for money principles.
In the creation of the 5-year strategy, the following were the major discussion points during the workshop:
The objectives of the workshop were threefold:
