Overview
For effective M&E application, it is best if organizations or projects developed and implemented their own customized internal processes. One-time trainings are effective but not satisfactorily completely successful. A more effective approach in developing such capacity is longer time mentoring of staff or teams. As a Learning Partner, Right Track Africa (RTA) has supported the capacities of various clients in developing and implementing their own M&E systems through training and mentoring. The exact nature of the relationship model is consultatively agreed upon between the client, RTA, and if necessary the funding institutions.
RTA’s Learning Partner and Mentoring Projects
TechnoServe – Outcome Harvesting (Oct 2019 to Apr 2020)
Following the project’s first year of TechnoServe’s AINFP program (2018 – 2019), the organization sought to design and implement an Outcomes Harvest (OH) to identify and validate what had been achieved, and the contributing roles of the program and other factors. This was part of the Collaborative, Learning and Adaptive approach for the program, where OH was proposed as one of the program evaluation approaches. The “Harvest” was to identify and validate achieved outcomes – intended and unintended, positive and negative and the contributing factors therein supporting Evidence-Informed Decision Making (EIDM) in the AINFP project implementation Between October 2019 and March 2020, RTA’s Julius Nyangaga mentored the TechnoServe MEL manager to use OH for the annual report.
Information and data was collected from 26 food processors across the AINFP operations in Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Zambia with 21 of them reporting considerable change as a result of the customized technical assistance provided, support in developing market linkages with BoP (Bottom of Pyramid) markets, sourcing from smallholder farmers and accessing finance. Around 74 outcomes statements were collected from country teams and after external substantiation, the outcomes found aligned into the program support areas. Besides describing the outcome and the contribution, the outcome harvesters rated the significance of these outcomes as high, medium, or low in contributing towards the overall project goal.
Member of DECI’s support to IDRC’s CPC Projects (2013 to 2020)
Since 2013, Julius has been a member of the IDRC-funded project – Developing Evaluation and Communication Capacity in Information Society Research (DECI). The project is implemented by the New Economy Development Group (NEDG), and its aim is to implement and evaluate the twin processes of evaluation and communication. DECI has supported several IDRC-funded project to mentor them in applying utilization-focused evaluation (UFE). Julius of RTA has been one of DECI’s anchors in Africa supporting the project’s support to IDRC-funded cyber policy centres (CPC): Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network (OCSDNet), ROER4D (Research on Open Educational Resources for Development), RIA (Research ICT Africa), and CIPIT (Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law, based in Strathmore, Nairobi Kenya)