I would like to make my modest contribution to the discussion revived by Dr. Mustapha Malki. My view is that the position that evaluation is better developed as a practice than the monitoring function should be put into perspective across countries and stages of development. Indeed, most African countries have medium-term strategy or development documents aligned with development agendas (Agenda 2063 and Agenda 2030) to better manage their development processes. These National Development Plans, which provide the framework for all interventions within these states, provide monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to better assess progress towards the various objectives. The operationalization of these monitoring and evaluation mechanisms allows the production of periodic reports to monitor the implementation of these national plans/development strategies. However, several reports or studies show that the practice of evaluation remains low in many African countries.
This could be explained by several reasons, including the high cost of evaluations, low interest in evaluations by policy makers, a lack of understanding of the scope of evaluations by many stakeholders, the inadequacy of the legal and regulatory framework on evaluation, and the lack of a national evaluation policy. These reasons tend to focus on monitoring activities, which allow us to assess the progress in implementing government and Technical and Financial Partners interventions at the national, local and sectoral levels. Thus, Technical and Financial Partners support the implementation of robust monitoring systems across the many countries, which are an important basis for conducting credible evaluations. Efforts will need to be made, however, to support the strengthening of national statistical systems to provide reliable statistical data to inform monitoring and evaluation systems. Efforts will also need to continue at the level of awareness within states to help a better understanding of the scope and value of evaluations. This could be done in support of the growing commitment of Technical and Financial Partners to evaluations of development policies, programmes and projects.
SAKO G. Oumar
Expert in Strategic Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation
This is a very interesting and timely topic of discussion.
In my view, the fact is that very few evaluations are carried out in our African countries because of the idea or opinion that often people have about evaluation. In fact, evaluation is not always perceived as a tool for decision-making. Efforts should focus first and foremost on improving this view of evaluation by presenting it as a tool for decision-making and as an instrument for improving public policy formulation.
Also, the presentation and the communication around the conclusions of evaluations will have to be improved to facilitate the appropriation of these conclusions by the policy makers who could use them to guide the formulation of the public policies.
In sum, improving the formulation of public policies on the basis of consideration of evaluation results requires first good communication about the importance of evaluations in order to further promote the practice and also the refinement of methods or techniques for presenting these results to policy makers in order to capture their attention.
SAKO Gninnakan Oumar
Expert en Planification stratégique, suivi-évaluation
Gninnakan Oumar SAKO
Expert en Planification stratégique, suivi-évaluationDear All,
I would like to make my modest contribution to the discussion revived by Dr. Mustapha Malki. My view is that the position that evaluation is better developed as a practice than the monitoring function should be put into perspective across countries and stages of development. Indeed, most African countries have medium-term strategy or development documents aligned with development agendas (Agenda 2063 and Agenda 2030) to better manage their development processes. These National Development Plans, which provide the framework for all interventions within these states, provide monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to better assess progress towards the various objectives. The operationalization of these monitoring and evaluation mechanisms allows the production of periodic reports to monitor the implementation of these national plans/development strategies. However, several reports or studies show that the practice of evaluation remains low in many African countries.
This could be explained by several reasons, including the high cost of evaluations, low interest in evaluations by policy makers, a lack of understanding of the scope of evaluations by many stakeholders, the inadequacy of the legal and regulatory framework on evaluation, and the lack of a national evaluation policy. These reasons tend to focus on monitoring activities, which allow us to assess the progress in implementing government and Technical and Financial Partners interventions at the national, local and sectoral levels. Thus, Technical and Financial Partners support the implementation of robust monitoring systems across the many countries, which are an important basis for conducting credible evaluations. Efforts will need to be made, however, to support the strengthening of national statistical systems to provide reliable statistical data to inform monitoring and evaluation systems. Efforts will also need to continue at the level of awareness within states to help a better understanding of the scope and value of evaluations. This could be done in support of the growing commitment of Technical and Financial Partners to evaluations of development policies, programmes and projects.
SAKO G. Oumar
Expert in Strategic Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation