Status of Sanitation in Ghana and the Role of CSOs in Policy Processes
August 2020
In June 2019, CLEAR AA and Twende Mbele worked with Ghana Monitoring and Evaluation Forum to commission a baseline study on collaboration between Civil Society and Government for improved accountability and government performance in the use of evidence and results in the sanitation sector. This baseline report provides a brief on the sanitation situation in Ghana; the processes which lead to the generation of sanitation-related data or evidence, and how these are used to inform or influence relevant sector policies. It starts with background information on the sanitation sector in Ghana, key actors and stakeholders and their roles. It also provides the different indicators necessary, at various levels, to assess evidence and the various policy making platforms.
The report concludes that although CSOs/NGOs play a significant role in the use of evidence in the sanitation sector, their involvement is largely limited to evidence generated from projects, and the meta-data related to this evidence production is not coordinated across civil society. Some of the indicators are disaggregated and not harmonized. This situation is inadequate and will have to be complemented by routine administrative data. The report recommends the need to develop agreed sets of indicators, channelled through government’s administrative data framework (GSGDA II, NDPC, 2014). It also suggests some important measures required of NGOs/CSOs in the evidence generation processes must be adhered to, if they are to inform sanitation policy and make the desired impact.
Effects of the Parliamentary Capacity Strengthening Initiatives
February 2020
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.
What is meant by transforming evaluations for Africa?
July 2020
The call for transformation and decolonization is nothing new in African vocabulary, there’s been calls for decolonization education and healthcare sectors, and the transformation of political and economic participation in terms of more women being represented. The evaluation development space has not been exempted from these calls. Over the years, there’s been growing calls for the transformation of the evaluation landscape with more female representation and the use of more black evaluators in the space. Phrases such as: Made In Africa Evaluation; Indigenous Evaluation; and Decolonizing Evaluations have been touted more and more frequency.
Do they all mean the same thing? If not, then what do they all mean? This webinar titled ‘What Meant by Transforming Evaluation for Africa’ will look to unpack what the meanings of phrases such as ‘Made In Africa Evaluation’, ‘Indigenous Evaluation’ and ‘Decolonizing Evaluations’.
CLEAR-AA Seminar on Rapid Evaluation
June 2020
Part A: Introduction to rapid evaluation
1. Introduction
2. Purpose of Guideline
3. What do we mean by Rapid Evaluations
4. Deciding when to use rapid evaluations (why consider, advantages/disads, which situations
5. Deciding how to implement rapid evaluations
6. Summary of the main features of rapid evaluations
Part B: Designing a rapid evaluation Structured as per DPME Guideline:
Rapid Evaluations Toolkit
March 2019
This toolkit provides a framework to think about rapid evaluations, and provides example questions, indicators and tools to do it.
Rapid evaluations is, in many ways, relatively straightforward. It is however, new in the government system, and this resource provides information and a helping hand with how to embed it in the work of the interested official.
Rapid evaluations address the need to quickly assess policy/programme/strategy/function delivery, and establish the main performance data, with main recommendations for improvements. They help us to understand and learn from what works, what doesn’t, when and for whom. It is also an important tool for accountability, helping departments and entities to demonstrate uptake, and that our work as policy/programme/project/strategy/service delivery managers is of high quality and useful. Rapid evaluations are the latest addition to the National Evaluation System in government, and can be undertaken internally by officials, and/or involve procurement of service providers.
This toolkit is intended for use by officials in evaluations,, research and policy/programme/project/service delivery implementation working in national/provincial/local government departments and Schedule I & II entities.
It is based the work of the DPME extend the NES to include rapid evaluations to encourage sharing and learning; to improve the quality, reach and use of evaluations; and to produce evidence for decision-making quickly. Rapid evaluations is still a work in progress; we are publishing this guide in the hope that it will be useful to others, but also that it will invite discussion and shared learning.