Evaluating Country Programmes - OECD Online Bookshop

Evaluating Country Programmes
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provide a much more extensive assessment of an institution’s assistance and activities
and their impact in a country. Many of the World Bank’s CARs and CANs as well
as the AsDB CAPE cover many of these broader areas and issues. CAEs cover many
of the issues addressed by the CSEs and CPEs but also attempt to look at additional
issues such as:
– Did the institution’s activities contribute to the country’s development at the
macro-economic or sectoral level?
– Did the country show commitment to the policy and institutional reforms and
other prescriptions of the Bank?
– Did the country demonstrate its own initiatives in its development objectives?
– Were there political, economic or environmental circumstances which caused
the institution’s strategy to be modified or altered?
– Was there an impact on cross-cutting areas such as poverty reduction, environment,
governance and gender equity?
An approach and criteria for country assistance evaluation
Given the broad range of issues, it is clear that there is some complexity in
developing a uniform and systematic approach to country assistance evaluation,
one that all of the MDBs can follow. Differences in the scope, structure, coverage,
timing and process in each of the institutions require that the evaluation process
focus on issues relevant to that institution. Approaches to country assistance evaluation
may function on different levels or tiers of coverage and analysis. These levels
may be defined as follows:
Programme rationale and coherence
At this level of analysis, the evaluation would focus on i) the rationale for the
selection of a particular strategy or strategies for a country, ii) the coherence of this
strategy with the priorities and policies of the institution and those of the country
and with the problems it faces, and possibly iii) the efficiency with which the entire
process was carried out. The emphasis at this level would not be to consider efficacy,
impact or results issues, but rather focus on the relevance of the strategies and
efficiency in the preparation, design and implementation of the programme.
Programme delivery effectiveness
At this level of analysis, there would be a much closer scrutiny of projects, programmes,
TCs, policy formulation and other assistance activities such as private
sector support in order to measure the effectiveness of planning, implementation,
outcome and ex-post results and lessons learned. This process would require an
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