Effects of the Parliamentary Capacity Strengthening Initiatives

This report presents results from a tracer study conducted by CLEAR-AA in partnership with Twende Mbele following their capacity strengthening interventions aimed at improving evidence use and M&E processes in African parliaments between 2017 and 2018. The tracer study data presented in this report was collected from participants based in Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Ghana, Kenya, Benin, Malawi, Zambia, Nigeria and South Africa. The study participants were largely drawn from national parliaments (these also included members of the African Parliamentarians’ Network on Development Evaluation – APNODE), but also to a lesser extent from regional parliaments, Voluntary Organisations for Professional Evaluation (VOPES), government, academia and civil society entities.

The main objectives of the tracer study were:

• to better understand the effectiveness of the capacity strengthening interventions (Training, Training of Trainers (ToT), and Peer Learning workshops) particularly in terms of learning, application, and transfer of knowledge and skills with regards to strengthening evidence use in parliaments;
• to generate foundational evidence around effective capacity development approaches that could be built on;
• to provide recommendations on how the effectiveness and sustainability of parliamentary capacity strengthening initiatives can be improved.