Monitoring and evaluation in Malawi
When Ian Wilson and Carlos Barahona of the Statistical Services Centre at the University of Reading were asked to review an evaluation of the effectiveness of an aid package in Malawi, they expected a simple enough task. But few things in the developing world are simple. Where aid for the poorest is concerned, is evidence collected and analysed with enough rigour to enable well‐informed decisions to be made?
Uncovering the mysteries of inclusion: Empirical and methodological possibilities in participatory evaluation in an international context.
The inclusion of stakeholders in participatory evaluation in highly diverse, culturally complex settings remains a challenge, given issues of inequity, power, voice, capacity and skill. These challenges are well documented, but there is a relative absence of papers devoted to addressing them based on examples and evidence. In this paper, we report our review of 51 empirical studies of participatory evaluations conducted in the international domain, focusing on the methods of inclusion used in the evaluations. Our findings address "the who" (which stakeholders are included and which excluded), "the why" (rationales for participation) and "the how" (by what means and in what manner) of inclusion. We were struck by the scale of some development programs, geographically and in terms of the number of diverse program sponsors and stakeholders, and how this necessitated highly creative, innovative participatory techniques to ensure that anyone (and in some cases everyone) could have a voice in the process, regardless of location, language ability, privilege, power, gender, age or culture.
SOCIAL PROTECTION AND PRO-POOR AGRICULTURAL GROWTH: WHAT SCOPE FOR SYNERGIES?
Social protection (SP) and livelihood promotion have conventionally been handled by different departments within governments and donor organisations. Taking the example of agriculture, this paper argues that the scope for synergy between them (when narrowly defined as ‘making the whole bigger than the sum of its parts’) is limited. However, there is substantial unexploited scope for introducing the perspectives of the one into the design and implementation of the other, i.e. for giving aspects of SP more of a growth-promoting dimension, and for designing agriculture initiatives in ways aiming to reduce risk and vulnerability. • With few exceptions, questions of how social protection (SP) and the productive sectors relate to each other have been neglected in policy debates, yet are central to the notion of ‘pro-poor growth’. To address them is all the more urgent in the context of the high risks linked to growing commercial (including global) market exposure; reduced public investment in agriculture; the imperfections in agricultural input and output markets where privatisation has been overhasty, and the growing constraints on recurrent budgets that any expansion of SP is likely to face.  Different measures and instruments within SP impact differently on agriculture and vice-versa, and trade-offs need to be considered carefully.  SP can be growth promoting where, for instance, it stimulates thrift and credit schemes, creates physical assets through employment schemes, and promotes personal insurance, but transfer payments can also be indirectly growth-promoting.  Several types of agricultural strategy can both promote growth and reduce risk, including revisions to legislation and regulation, investments in soil and water conservation and transport and communications infrastructure, innovative types of insurance, and appropriately focused provision of services, including research and extension.  Examples of synergy between SP and the productive sectors remain rare, but the principle underpins donor action in at least one major case (DFID, 2002) and, if implementation problems can be overcome, may have wider potential.  Inadequate planning and/or weak implementation of SP measures have at times impacted negatively on agriculture, as in the disruption of local markets caused by mis-timed food aid.  Social protection programmes might usefully distinguish among three categories of rural poor households: those well-established in productive activity; those highly vulnerable to risks that may force them to sell productive assets and re-engage (if at all) only as labourers, and those such as the sick or very elderly who are chronically unable to engage in productive activity. Initiatives such as the World Bank’s Social Risk Management Framework has mainly been concerned with the first two categories, but is now expanding towards the third  Transfers to the third category – who are generally among the poorest – can allow them to influence the local agricultural economy as consumers, a role rarely considered hitherto. However, they can also influence production, e.g. where part of formal transfer payments (such as pensions) are invested in production, and where existing informal transfers are ‘released’ into productive activity (or consumption) as they are replaced by formal ones. Food transfers and cash transfers have very different implications for agriculture, which are rarely considered.  Growing evidence that food insecurity in southern Africa has important chronic dimensions requires a rethinking of approaches, so that food aid to relieve any acute shortages is complemented by longer-term combinations of protection and promotion. Policy conclusions