Evaluating Country Programmes - OECD Online Bookshop

Methodology
OECD 1999
CPE in the Netherland’s Development Assistance: The Case of Egypt
As the main objective of CPEs is to assess the effectiveness and impact of aid
programmes at country level, an important challenge for evaluators is how to aggregate
project and sector level information to arrive at country programme level conclusions.
In the CPE for Egypt, the following analytical steps were taken to arrive at country
programme level conclusions:
i) To enable the identification of projects and programme aid activities for the
selected period (1975-1996), sufficient projects were included in the evaluation
to allow for conclusions at individual sector level (varying between 80 to
90% of disbursements). To enable conclusions to be drawn at the overall
country programme level, care had to be taken to cover a sufficient level of
disbursements at the total disbursement level (70% of all disbursements
over the period 1975-1996).
ii) Clustering of projects in five main sectors. The large number of projects
(some 300) and wide variety of supported activities made it necessary to
distinguish sub-sectors with a higher degree of homogeneity. For example,
in the sector agriculture and animal husbandry, three sub-sectors were distinguished:
poultry, horticulture and dairy products. In the water management
and drainage sector, activities were grouped according to the following
categories: water research, drainage execution and integrated water management
at sub-national level.
iii) At project level, relevance appeared from the type of problems addressed
and their seriousness as perceived in Egyptian policies and donor documents.
Effectiveness was assessed by comparing outcomes of projects with
objectives and, where mentioned, with concrete targets. Evaluators were
confronted with objectives that were often phrased in general terms, insufficient
baseline studies to compare pre-project and after-project situations,
and absence of cost-benefit data. Efficiency analysis was in most cases based
on project cycle performance (duration of preparations, quality of documents,
delays in implementation, cost exceeding budgets, quality of monitoring
and evaluations at the project level). Findings for individual projects
were aggregated at sector level to arrive at an overall assessment of effectiveness
(and efficiency) weighed according to the share in total disbursements
for the sector. For each sector, evaluation findings were then related
to the main strategic objectives of the Netherlands’ development assistance:
economic self-reliance, poverty alleviation, environmental conservation
and improvement of the position of women. For sustainability, the
analysis focused on the three main aspects: financial, institutional, and
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