Programme Areas

Evaluation Capacity Development (ECD)

The evaluation of development has been pre-occupied with assessing the efficiency and effectiveness of development interventions, often led and funded by donors. As the conception and delivery of development undergoes major transformation towards global policy coherence (MDGs); country-driven strategies (RDP in South Africa, PRSPs in other African countries); and broad sector programmes and services (health, education, etc), the evaluation of development needs new perspectives and tools; as well as new actors, forms of action and purposes. In a large measure, evaluation must address the multiple dimensions of development, its governance and the long-term sustainability of development efforts of governments, the private sector and civil society.

The Institute for Policy Alternatives coordinates a series of evaluation capacity development initiatives to enhance the capacity of local, national and international practitioners in understanding new paradigms for evaluation, and in the use of participatory tools for the evaluation of development. At IPA:

Local Government practitioners learn how to design and implement M&E systems for monitoring decentralized governance and poverty reduction initiatives.

Civil society organizations develop capacity for citizen engagement in M&E, by acquiring skills to establish M&E systems; develop and apply participatory tools for citizen engagement in monitoring and evaluating the multiple dimensions of their development.

ECD Approach & Principles

All ECD and Evaluation efforts at IPA are founded upon the following approaches:

• Engaging Communities & Citizens, to enhance capacities of citizens to collate and analyze information, while providing them voice in the process of knowledge creation.
• Returning information Communities by Creating an Interface: As the cycle of research concludes, IPA ensures that communities and stakeholders from whom information was collected get a chance to receive feedback on the use to which their information is put.
• Engaging with Policy Practitioners: IPA evaluation efforts are oriented towards influencing policies. Our tools for evaluation training, field engagements in evaluation and policy research therefore feed into an advocacy initiative, to use empirical research and evaluation as evidence for policy reform.