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Evaluating Country Programmes
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Box 2.1. Drawn from CPE Reports or from CPE Guidelines,
Terms of References or Discussion Papers (cont.)
In the second round “the general objective was to study the policy relevance,
effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of the Netherlands development cooperation
programme”, using four questions:
1. How does the Netherlands aid programme relate to the recipient country’s
main development problems and to [the recipient country’s] and Netherlands
policies?
2. What were the results of the aid programme and how did the activities contribute
to achieving the main objectives and priorities of Netherlands development
assistance?
3. How efficiently were activities organised and carried out?
4. To what extent are the results of Netherlands development assistance sustainable?
(Netherlands/Bolivia, 1998: 1; Netherlands/Egypt, 1998: 11).
Ireland
In Ethiopia, where the Irish aid programme had only been in operation for two
years, the “overall objective” of the interim evaluation was to provide “a forwardlooking
assessment of programme balance, content and progress towards achieving
satisfactory impacts… rather than attempting to measure impact (after too short an
interval), or focussing on issues of implementation performance (which is the task
of the management information system)”.
(Ireland/Ethiopia 1997: i.)
A number of questions arise here. First, it is worth asking about the valueadded
of CPEs. Most donors already undertake evaluations at the level of projects,
sectors, and sometimes programmes. What distinctive insights do CPEs provide?
There would seem to be three answers to this question:
i) To describe the performance of the programme as a whole. The term “performance”
refers to different aspects in different cases – a point we return to
below – but can be taken variously to include policy relevance, impact, effectiveness,
efficiency, and sustainability. Some donors are able to cover some
of these topics through a programmatic perspective using other instruments:
USAID, for example, cited sector and programme evaluations which are
designed to evaluate the agency’s strategic objectives and strategic impact
in a country. But for many the CPE fulfils this role, enabling donors to answer
questions such as: Is our overall aid programme to this country relevant to
OECD 1999