Twendle Mbele Using M&E To Improve Government Performance and Accountability: A Glance of 6 Countries’ NES
February 2018 The policy- and decision-making environment is inherently political – both party political in terms of achieving an electoral mandate, and in terms of organisation politics and the political economy of the country. This leads to webs of power and influence, through which stakeholders must learn to n…
Using M&E to improve
government performance
and accountability
Introduction
The Twende Mbele programme strives to
support African governments in their endeavours
to improve their performance, as well as
accountability and transparency towards their
citizens, by strengthening their monitoring and
evaluation (M&E) systems and practices.
The core members of the programme are Benin, Uganda, and
South Africa, as well as the Centre for Learning on Evaluation and
Results for Anglophone Africa (CLEAR-AA) and the Independent
Development Evaluation unit at the African Development Bank.
Photo credit: Doris Kembabazi
Twende Mbele works with these and other African countries,
building on global experience and growing the range of effective
M&E mechanisms.
The programme aims to support peer-learning between existing
and new partners in order to tackle common M&E challenges and
provide a platform for countries to learn from each other. Although
Twende Mbele only formally started in early 2016, some valuable
lessons are already beginning to emerge, drawing from scoping
studies in the three core member countries, as well as in Ghana,
Kenya and Niger, a country consultation workshop held in March
2017, and a validation workshop on the evaluation of the South
African National Evaluation System (NES) which took place in July
2017. While the countries are all at different stages of developing
national M&E systems, these lessons can be adapted for each one’s
specific context.
February 2018
The policy- and decision-making environment is inherently political – both party political in terms of achieving an electoral mandate, and in terms of organisation politics and the political economy of the country. This leads to webs of power and influence, through which stakeholders must learn to navigate. In this context, evaluation evidence is one influence on outcomes. It requires translating complex evaluation findings into usable information and recommendations, building a portfolio of evidence, a coalition of stakeholders to support it, and ensuring its use requires planning and influencing strategies.
Report NameAt a Glance: 6 Countries’ NESPartnerCLEAR-AAOur RoleMonitoring and Evaluation CategoriesPublications, South Africa Share