Evaluating Country Programmes - OECD Online Bookshop

French Experience with Country Programme Evaluations
How can the effective involvement of partner country officials and beneficiaries
be ensured given prevailing donor needs and requirements for accountability
and professional evaluation standards?
Partner countries will not become involved in CPEs unless they want to be. Evaluation
is new to many developing countries and sometimes does not even exist. It is
often confused with inspection, monitoring or auditing. Many countries do not have
the skills or resources to set up a body of evaluators. Regional seminars on strengthening
evaluation capacities organised by the OECD have shown that many countries
are interested, but also that significant obstacles remain to be overcome.
The case of CPEs is even more complex than other types of evaluation (project,
programme, sector, etc.); skills in the area of overall evaluation of public policy are
relatively rare. The French Ministry of Co-operation hires highly specialised consultants;
their degree of expertise does not exist in southern partner countries.
Nonetheless, local experts can provide valuable back-up, and the terms of reference
published in the Official Bulletin always state that priority will be given to
northern consultants who use the services of local experts.
One of the criteria for selection of experts in the tenders issued by the Treasury
Department’s Evaluation Unit is the participation of consultants from beneficiary
countries. This is often easier to obtain than the involvement of government representatives
from the beneficiary country, something always sought when CPEs are
undertaken. However, two CPEs have been closely monitored by local authorities,
which seconded a representative for the occasion. This was the case for
Bangladesh, and for the evaluation of all forms of co-operation with Yemen in which
the Yemeni Director-General of Telecommunications was actively involved. But
these CPEs were not joint evaluations. What they revealed was more a desire to
involve the partner in the implementation and findings of the study.
Generally speaking, a phased approach is more appropriate, complying with
the expectations of the partner country and incorporating methodological support
in any joint evaluation exercise. It should be noted that evaluations can never meet
the exact concerns of both the donor and beneficiary countries at one and the same
time. Each CPE has its own features, and the mechanism should be tailored to the
specific situation.
The French Ministry of Co-operation is currently conducting its first joint evaluation,
with Cape Verde. It does not have any previous experience of such an
undertaking. After a preliminary visit to Praia by a French delegation in
December 1998, the Cape Verde authorities confirmed their interest and agreement.
They formulated three requests: to be able to designate a national consultant,
to have civil servants join the evaluation team (without interfering in the CPE),
and to use this opportunity to acquire evaluation skills, or at least basic training.
OECD 1999
179