CAPACITY BUILDING FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE MONITORING
AND EVALUATION PROGRAMME
Monitoring and Evaluation Programme of the African Plan of
Action To Accelerate the Implementation of the Dakar and Beijing
Platforms for Action 2000-2004
Second
Meeting of the Committee on Women and Development
5-8 November 2001, Addis
Abeba, Ethiopia
I. Context
II. Capacity Building Workshops
III. Support to the Monitoring and Evaluation Process
IV. Partnerships in Capacity Building
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I. CONTEXT
The Capacity Building Component constitutes one of the 3 components
of the Monitoring and Evaluation Programme that is centred around
the implementation of the African Plan of Action to accelerate
the implementation of the Dakar and Beijing Platforms for Action.
It is planned to prepare and facilitate the implementation of
the Monitoring and Evaluation Programme within the framework
of the regional and global preparations for the Beijing + 10
review meetings in 2004 and 2005. The other components include
the Monitoring and Evaluation Tool at the National Level, the
Monitoring and Evaluation Tool at the Regional and Sub-Regional
Levels, and the Operational Mechanism for Monitoring and Evaluating
the Implementation of the African Plan of Action.
Participating institutions at the national level
Given the specific resource constraints of time, finances and
human power, the number of the participating ministries are
limited to 6 namely finance, planning, agriculture, trade and
industry, health and ministries in charge of gender. The choice
of these ministries is strategic because, given their specific
mandates, their acceptance to integrate gender internally would
have a multiplier effect both on other ministries and on women
in general. The ministries of finance and planning, for example
are critical to the success or failure of mainstreaming gender
in government policies, plans and programmes given their influence
on national and sectoral planning as well as resource distribution;
the ministry of agriculture, on the other hand is where the
majority of women's economic activities are concentrated, yet
they are virtually invisible, their labour unaccounted for,
and rarely benefit from support services; the ministries of
trade and industry rarely reach out to include women as factors
of production; the ministry of health has the important gender
issue to tackle considering that the HIV/AIDS pandemic is affecting
women disproportionately; and the ministry in charge of gender
is central to the coordination and advocacy for gender mainstreaming
in all the sectors.
Some technical non-government organizations who are heavily
involved in development work will also be invited to participate
in the Monitoring and Evaluation Programme considering that
both women and men are the intended targets of their work as
actors and beneficiaries. It is therefore critical that they
too adopt the gender approach as a strategy for ensuring that
their efforts have the intended impact on the intended beneficiaries.
The participating NGOs will be selected and coordinated by the
national coordinating NGO with the assistance of the participating
ministries.
Participating institutions at the subregional and regional
levels
The Regional Economic Communities (RECs) at the subregional
level and the African Union (former OAU), African Development
Bank ( ADB) and the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) will
participate in the Monitoring and Evaluation Programme. Each
of the structures in charge of gender within these institutions
will appoint a Monitoring and Evaluation Officer (IM&EO)
who will be directly responsible for the monitoring and evaluation
activities.
Time frame
The Monitoring and Evaluation Programme will be launched in
2002 with the implementation of the Capacity Building Component.
In terms of time sequence, the Capacity Building Component will
comprise two parts: the Capacity Building Workshops that will
be followed by Support to the Monitoring and Evaluation Process.
The Workshops will be conducted from mid-January to April 2002.
Thereafter, the Monitoring and Evaluation Process will start
with the planning and implementation of the monitoring activities
that will continue through 2003. Annual monitoring reports will
be produced and submitted to the relevant bodies. The year 2004
will be devoted to the Evaluation of the state of implementation
of the African Plan of Action that will be discussed at the
Regional High Level Consultative Meeting to review the implementation
of the Dakar and Beijing Platforms for Action in November 2004.
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II. CAPACITY BUILDING WORKSHOPS
(a) Objectives
The specific objectives of the Capacity Building Workshops
are :
· To ensure that the participants have a thorough understanding
of the Monitoring and Evaluation Tool, how to use it, how to
interpret the information collected through it, and how it should
be synthesized into a national report each year.
· To ensure that participants understand the operational
mechanism whereby the monitoring and evaluation programme will
be implemented
· To discuss the resource implications of the M and E
Programme
(b) Participants
The Capacity Building Workshops are primarily aimed at those
actors who have the major responsibility not only for monitoring
various elements of the Plan but are also responsible for coordinating
the monitoring and evaluation process from the beginning to
the end. At the national level, these include the National Monitoring
and Evaluation Officers (NM&EO) in the ministries in charge
of gender and women's issues, the Sectoral Monitoring and Evaluation
Officers (SM&EO) from the participating sectoral ministries
of planning, finance, agriculture, trade and industry and health,
as well as representatives from national coordinating non-government
organizations ( Coordinating NGO) who will be responsible for
coordinating information-gathering in participating NGOs. Each
country will have 7 Monitoring and Evaluation Officers participating
in the training workshops. The ECA Subregional Development Centres
will also send their Monitoring and Evaluation Officers to participate
in the workshops within their subregion.
The Institutional Monitoring and Evaluation Officers from
the RECs, the African Union, ADB, and ECA will also participate
in a Capacity Building Workshop that will be organized for them.
(c) Organization of the Workshops
The Workshops will be conducted at the level of each of the
5 ECA subregions. They will be organized by the ECA Subregional
Development Centres and coordinated by the African Centre for
Women. Each Workshop will last 3 days. The ABANTU for Development
and the Pan African Institute for Development Central and West
Africa will collaborate with the African Centre for Women in
the Capacity Building Workshops.
The Workshops will be conducted mono-lingually either in English
or in French. Since each country will have 7 participants at
the workshops, a total of 371 participants will be trained.
Out of those, 203 will be trained in French while 168 will be
trained in English. The size of the Workshops will be limited
to approximately 30 participants.
(e) The contents of the Workshops
(1). Understanding the Tool for Monitoring and Evaluation
The Capacity Building Workshops will address the notions of
monitoring and evaluation so that participants are able to clearly
understand how the two processes reinforce each other and where
they are different.
The participants will need to understand all the components
of the Monitoring and Evaluation Tools, the different areas
they are focusing on and the objectives behind the information
they are seeking. They will need to be familiar with the techniques
for using the Tools as well as how to interpret the information
gathered.
(2) Understanding the Monitoring and Evaluation Process
The Workshops will clarify the scope and the levels to be covered
by the monitoring and evaluation programme. At the national
level, it will be unrealistic to expect to monitor all the sectoral
ministries. Monitoring activities will be carried out not only
at the level of the headquarters but also at the provincial
and local levels. NGOs that are considered critical to the implementation
of the African Plan of Action will also be part of the process.
The double role of the NM&EO in monitoring the implementation
of the national gender policy within the ministry in charge
of gender, the national coordinating mechanism and the accountability
mechanisms, and then coordinating the monitoring process in
the sectoral ministries will need to be clearly delineated.
The mechanics of its implementation will also have to be clearly
understood. The coordination role includes the timely collection
of sectoral reports including those from NGOs in order to synthesize
them into annual national monitoring reports. Similarly, the
monitoring role of the SM&EO will be clearly explained including
how to determine when data and information collection at the
provincial and local levels is indicated.
The importance of formulating plans of action which outline
what has to be done within a well articulated time frame will
also have to be addressed by the capacity building exercise.
It is the plans of action that will guide monitoring and evaluation
activities and indicate where adjustments in terms of timing,
strategies etc are required.
Monitoring and evaluation at the subregional and regional
levels should be discussed around the existence of gender policy
within the institutions, the establishment of the necessary
institutional mechanisms to facilitate its implementation and
the adequacy of their capacity building programmes towards this
end.
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III. SUPPORT TO THE MONITORING AND EVALUATION PROCESS
This segment of the Capacity Building Component will entail
travel to various countries to monitor the process of the implementation
of the Monitoring and Evaluation Programme. Teams composed of
representatives from ACW, SRDCs and the collaborating institutions
( ABANTU and PAID) will travel to randomly selected countries
within each subregion to follow-up the monitoring exercise in
2002 and 2003.The follow-up will ensure that the process is
evolving as intended and where there are problems, corrective
measures will be advised on the spot. Similar support might
be given to the evaluation process should time allow.
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IV. PARTNERSHIP IN CAPACITY BUILDING
On the basis of what has been outlined above, partners are
invited to select the areas that they would like to support
in the implementation of the Monitoring and Evaluation Programme.
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