Mid-term Review of the Diakonia Strategic Peace Building ... - Sida

Executive Summary
This report presents the findings of the mid-term review of Diakonia’s programme
Strategic Peace Building in Zimbabwe for the period 2012-2014 that was submitted
to and funded by Sida/Embassy of Sweden in Zimbabwe. This evaluation, commissioned
by the Embassy, is a follow-up of an evaluation of Diakonia’s programme that
was performed in 2011. It assesses and draws conclusions and recommendations on
the first year of the new programme.
This mid-term review shows that numerous positive changes have taken place since
the 2011 evaluation. Diakonia has taken the recommendations of the evaluation very
seriously and has embarked upon a series of processes aimed at implementing each
recommendation and at addressing the weaknesses that characterised its previous
programme in Zimbabwe. Diakonia has, first of all, succeeded in putting in place an
institutional set-up for an in-depth modification of the previous programme and the
implementation of a new one. This was done through a three-fold approach (successful
recruitment of new management and staff at the Harare office, greater involvement
of the Regional Office in Nairobi and systematic use of competent national consultants)
that proved highly relevant and effective. This new institutional set-up has
been able to lay the ground for the development of a relevant and necessary process
for critically assessing and learning from the shortcomings of the previous programme.
It has contributed to creating an environment that is conducive to the development
of a new programme by addressing key issues and helping to put the programme
back on track. Diakonia has focused on restoring relationships with the partners
in Zimbabwe, which had been damaged during the last three years. Diakonia has
embarked on a frank dialogue with its partners that aims at critically assessing their
relevance and performance while increasing their ownership of the programme
through greater involvement in financial management issues, risk and conflict analysis.
Diakonia has, moreover, been able to develop a capacity development strategy of
remarkable quality. Finally, Diakonia has succeeded, in a short amount of time, in
going from being totally unknown among international actors in Zimbabwe to being
considered as a reliable partner that brings a true added value to the democratisation
process in the country.
There are, however, a number of areas of the work that need to be improved. Diakonia
still faces a series of challenges in relation to strategic planning. Despite an
undeniable improvement of the quality of conflict analysis, it does not clearly lead to
priorities for programming. The analysis suggests that the programme deals with strategic
peace building without explaining what this means for Diakonia. The current
programme is more focused than the previous one, but it is still too vague: the logical
framework is too general, it fails to reflect what the partners want to achieve and the
results (at output and outcome levels) of Diakonia’s support to its partners should be
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