Rethinking Monitoring and Evaluation: Challenges and Prospects in the Changing Global Aid Environment

Authors: Esther Mebrahtu, Brian Pratt, Linda Lonnqvist and Jerry Adams

Description: Development aid has its cycles, and recent years have seen a donor shift towards a technocratic, state-centred approach to bilateral development aid. M&E practitioners worldwide have observed a definite move away from an approach to M&E which emphasises qualitative outcomes, and poverty alleviation impacts. The aid effectiveness agenda and rise of direct budget support embody this shift, and M&E habits are forced to change accordingly.

Framed within this wider context, the book analyses emerging key issues for M&E professionals from around the world. In so doing, it provides valuable global insights into the M&E of advocacy, M&E of NGOs as donors, the M&E of large-scale humanitarian work, the role of the media in M&E, and experiments in citizen-based monitoring of the state.

The book is based on the findings of the 6th International M&E Conference and a series of global workshops preceding it. The process of the conference brought Southern perspectives to the forefront and covered a rich variety of experiences, which are presented and discussed in Chapter 3. Other sections include emerging common themes, overarching aid trends and implications for M&E directions.

The book concludes by highlighting common regional challenges to M&E practice and the opportunities that exist both for resolving these obstacles and improving practice. The book makes it ever more apparent that M&E still has an important role to play in challenging many of our current assumptions of poverty alleviation. 

About the authors:

Esther Mebrahtu has extensive experience of working in monitoring and evaluation for Christian Aid in Ethiopia

Brian Pratt is Executive Director at INTRAC

Linda Lonnqvist is a Researcher at INTRAC

Jerry Adams is Head of the Programme Support Unit at Water Aid  

Content:
1. Introduction and Contextual Analysis
2. On the Research Journey: A discussion of methodological issues
3. Perceptions and Practices of Participation
4. INGO Monitoring and Evaluation Frameworks
5. INGO Assessment of Local Participation
6. The Institutionalisation of Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation Approaches
7. INGOs – Creating the Space for Change