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Evaluating Country Programmes
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Parliament and taxpayers. However, if the process and product of Country Programme
Evaluation will always be bounded by the interests of the donor, there are
nonetheless ways in which participation of the intended beneficiary can be
increased within this frame.
The degree of co-operation which can be achieved may also be constrained by
the nature of the partner State. There are occasions in which the donor has legitimate
reason to doubt the capacity or willingness of the partner government to cooperate
fully in the conduct of either the country programme or the evaluation of
that country programme. Participation in a CPE exercise can impose a heavy burden
upon weak States under-endowed with financial and human resources. However,
several basic forms of facilitative partner consultation, such as the matrix scoring of
donors by government officials in Ethiopia, would seem to offer a relatively “light”
way of incorporating partner input without too heavy a burden on government time
or money. The lack of partner will is a more serious obstacle to CPE partnership than
the lack of partner capacity. Several donors noted a lukewarm enthusiasm among
the partner government to proposals that they participate in a CPE exercise: many
partners preferred to respond to an independent donor CPE with specific comments
or criticisms.
To summarise, there is much to be gained from greater participation of partner
actors (state and non-state) in the production and use of Country Programme Evaluations
(see Box 1.5). It was emphasised by the Egyptian and Tanzanian representatives
that participation in the CPE process was welcome and did improve both the
CPE and the country programme. However, more could be achieved if a greater
degree of participation was incorporated into the country programme in the first
place. Ultimately, achieving a greater level of partnership implies a shift in the rationale
for CPEs, from one defined in terms of institutional accountability to one of
stakeholder management of change.
An examination of the distribution of CPE reports as classified by the partner/
recipient country which is the subject of the evaluation shows, as noted above, a
marked concentration upon certain countries. Nepal, Sri Lanka and Zambia have
each been subject of four separate CPE reports; eight reports have been written
about country programmes in Tanzania. There is an obvious risk that multiple donor
CPEs in one country result in the unnecessary duplication of effort; that the same,
under-resourced government ministers or NGO representatives will have to spend
time answering the same questions from many donors. A workshop in Tanzania
would appear to confirm this suspicion. Four donors compared the findings of their
Tanzanian CPEs and found them to be remarkably similar. This was particularly pronounced
(unsurprisingly) in their analysis of the country situation (poverty profile,
government policy, economic growth prospects); interestingly, however, the CPEs
also came to very similar conclusions about what donors themselves did right and
what they did wrong.
OECD 1999