Improving the monitoring & evaluation of capacity building projects
Context
Over the past years, LuxDev and AFD (French Development Agency) have broadened their scope of intervention and developed public policy support missions in addition to their "traditional" development project financing activities. This has led them to develop support and capacity building activities that aim to promote the development of skills and the empowerment of the partners supported within the framework of their programs. These change-oriented approaches have been particularly developed in French-speaking West African countries, with a view to adress structural and institutional consolidation.
Given the progression of this type of intervention, measuring the results of the projects supported by the two agencies in terms of capacity building is becoming a major challenge - in particular to justify the human and financial resources dedicated to these activities. However, while some changes are easy to observe (support for the creation of an institution or changes in legal frameworks), others are hardly perceptible and require the use of specific tools & methodologies which are often missing.
This observation led to the launch of a joint AFD/LuxDev initiative on the monitoring of changes in West African countries, in partnership with the BOM (Bureau Organisation et Méthodes) of the Republic of Senegal, which has a unit dedicated to capacity building activities for public administration. Espelia was entrusted to facilitate this initiative.
Objective
The objective of the joint initiative is to propose methods and tools which will help to better monitor the results of the capacity building activities that are undertaken along with local and national project owners, in order to increase the robustness of the latter over time. It aims to move from result based monitoring and evaluation methods to more qualitative and innovative "change-oriented" approaches.
Our contribution
Espelia was entrusted with the task of facilitating the project and accompanying AFD, BOM, LuxDev and their partners in the development of a methodological corpus, according to a 4-step approach:
- 1st step : organisation of a collaborative online workshop bringing together the teams of AFD, BOM and LuxDev as well as their partners in the different west-african countries in order to identify the expectations and needs of participants & design the roadmap of the initiative ;
- 2nd step : capitalisation of best practices through documentation analysis & interviews with the stakeholders involved in the initiative, in order to develop a guidebook and toolbox ;
- 3rd step : organisation of a two day hybrid training session for the stakeholders involved in the initiative (AFD, BOM, LuxDev and their partners in the different countries), in order to test the content of the guidebook/toolbok on concrete examples of projects ;
- 4th step : dissemination of the guidebook/toolbok through the organisation of an opened webinar, as well as a coaching session for future trainers.
To access the guidebook & toolkit, please click here : https://luxdev.lu/files/documents/REFERENTIEL_RC.pdf
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