Monitoring and Evaluation

Monitoring and evaluation of development programmes and policy strategies are crucial for efficiently and effectively spending of public financial resources. In order to help authorities to better design and implement their programmes, we adapt the program project specific theory of change to provide comprehensive consultancy services in the following areas:

• setting up monitoring systems, development of M&E plans, project Implementation plans and M&E frameworks, monitoring manuals, and rules of procedures, elaboration of key performance indicators, including their definition, measurement methods and specification of data needs,
• continuous data collection before, during and after program roll out (monitoring), as well as measuring outcomes, impact and effectiveness of programmes (evaluation).
• strategic analysis and peer reviews on the state of programme management, including quantitative and qualitative assessment of outputs, results and efficiency of delivery, applying econometric methods to capture the effects of programme interventions (e.g. counterfactual impact evaluation).

The reliability of conclusions and evaluations depends to a large extent on the manner in which monitoring and evaluation is conducted. To assess performance, it is necessary to select, before the implementation of the project, indicators, which will permit the rating of the targeted outputs and outcomes. In our experience, an outcome indicator has two components: the baseline, which is the situation before the programme or project begins, and the target, which is the expected situation at the end of the project. An output indicator that does not have any baseline as the purpose of the output is to introduce something that does not exist yet. SmartAfrique R&D Consults Ltd has a pool of in-house expert and consultant with an average of 30 years work experience in monitoring and evaluation of project in Africa.