A break to chit-chat and share a dance

Participants dancing 

Yesterday evening was fun as co-hosts of AfrEA, the Institute of African Studies, treated participants to a song-and-dance cocktail at Yiri Lodge on the University of Ghana campus. There was good traditional music, so good that some members could not help but join in the dancing.

more pictures here

AfrEA is here at the right time

Dede Bedu-Addo

Mrs Dede Bedu-Addo, Coordinator of Ghana Monitoring & Evaluation Forum (GM&EF) has expressed her delight that Ghana is the first Anglophone country in West Africa to host the Conference of the AfrEA.

Speaking to Reportage at the conference centre, Mrs Bedu-Addo said, “It is a big honour, and I think it came at a good time, when we are all talking about monitoring, especially as we are an election year. I think it will help bring focus to what we expect of our government.”

It brings a lot of good prospects for the future also, she said. “We get to meet other people in E&M, and learn how the processes are being practiced in countries and institutions elsewhere. We can share and learn with different people from all over the world.”

While the conference will create great networking opportunities for participants who will pick new skills and techniques, we also  hope that it will create more understanding of the weaknesses and lapses in M&E, especially in Africa, where poverty is rife.

“Poverty has a way of making you think of the short term. M&E is a long-term developmental solution. Where resources go and how they are used is not very good. We hope that after this conference, we can go back and ask how our resources are being used and how we can hold people responsible for it,” she said.

“Anybody who lives on a budget, or has money coming in periodically needs to do M&E” Basically, they need to stop and check, and ask themselves where all the money went.”

This year’s conference is designed to help participants to be better equipped to meet the challenges of the times. It is a forum to use to build capacity for long-term benefit.

As a local association, the GM&EF found there is a lot of interest in monitoring and evaluation, especially in government circles, although, unfortunately it appears the “talk doesn’t go with the walk, largely because, often, there is not enough capacity, and the tools with which to work are unavailable, particularly, funding.”

But, Mrs Bedu-Addo believes that the networking and dialogue that will ensue at this year’s conference will help generate ways of building other tools that will help practitioners make more informed decisions.

So far, So good

Issaka Traore

Not daunted by the hiccups of the first day of the 6^th AfrEA Conference in Accra, the Board member in charge of Programmes and Socials,  Mr Issaka H. Traore is happy with the way things are going having found his rhythm once the meetings and workshops got underway.

As head of the task team putting together the schedule of programs and activities such as the papers, panels and workshops and the social events like the roundtables, one- on-one meetings and lunches, in effect, all the sideline activities, Issaka leads a team of volunteers, who he says have been very helpful.

Keeping to time is a general problem in Africa, but as Issaka says, “We don’t work alone, we rely on other task teams such as the Scholarship team, which takes care of submission of workshop papers. Since some papers came late, we couldn’t release the final program early enough. But, we are working to improve this.”

“You see, while we have been planning this event over a year now, the late arrival of some of the papers and inputs from some of our partners meant we could not have the two clear weeks we wanted to ensure everything was ready.”

That notwithstanding, things are beginning to settle and, “so far, so good” Issaka told Reportage on day two of  the conference. “I think the pre-conference  workshops and meetings, have helped to enhance and improve the skills of the participants. It has been good, particularly for us African evaluators, as we met and shared ideas with our counterparts from other continents. It has been very beneficial, learning of some of the best practices from around the world, and we can only move to build on what we have learned in those first two days.”

Putting together an international conference with a task team scattered around the globe is no mean undertaking, and this past year working on this project has been very exciting for Issaka. “Of course, we had a great local ground handling team that also helped. I think we have done well.”

Cairo on my mind

Issahaq Jalaludeen

Memories of Cairo, Egypt, the land of the Pharaohs still linger on my mind. The evening sunsets, dining by the Nile, visits to world-renowned landmarks, the pyramids, the city’s museum, the Red Sea and the Alexandria University with its gigantic library!

The city was the destination for the fifth conference of AfrEA, held from March 29 to April 2, 2009 at The Semiramis Intercontinental Hotel. It was on the theme ‘Perspectives On Impact Evaluation – Approaches To Assessing Development Effectiveness’. It attracted a large contingent Of Evaluators, Policy Makers, Politicians, Policy

Implementers and Development Agents all of whom descended on the ancient city to participate in the bi-annual conference co-organized by the International Initiative For Impact Evaluation (3ie), UNICEF and the Network Of Networks On Impact Evaluation (NONIE).

In spite of the breathtaking appeal of the city, which so inspired us, we were still able to go away noting the main highlights and outputs of the conference, which included the formalization Of AfrEA on its tenth anniversary culminating in its 2009 Board elections with Dr. Florence Etta being chosen as President; the launch of its Journal Of Development Effectiveness and the release of the draft NONIE Guidance on Impact Evaluation. Other highlights were the significant progress in the debate around and towards the launch of African Evaluation Journal; and indications of initiatives to develop Centers of Excellence to improve M&E capacity in Africa by the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group.

The meeting was splendid occasion set against the backdrop of the exciting tourist attractions the destination had to offer, and we all had a great time!