Across Africa, economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, by extreme weather and climate shocks, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine[1] has induced a re-thinking of development policies, strategies, and programs. The African Development Bank is forging ahead, informed by IDEV evidence of what works, what doesn’t work, and why.
Throughout the year 2022, IDEV’s active engagement with AfDB stakeholders, including Senior Management and task teams, ensured that important evaluative knowledge is being leveraged. For example, the new Bank Group Strategy for Addressing Fragility and Building Resilience in Africa (2022-2026), approved in March 2022, was strongly informed by the learnings from IDEV’s 2020 evaluation of the Bank’s previous Fragility Strategy (2014-2019) and its evaluation of the Transition Support Facility. Likewise, the Bank’s new Private Sector Development Strategy and its Framework for Public-Private Partnerships, both approved in January 2022, were informed by IDEV evaluations, as was the Sustainable Borrowing Policy, approved in February 2022.
In 2022, five Regional Member Countries (RMC) benefited from an IDEV evaluation of support by the Bank for their development programs, while the Bank’s overall support to its RMC was largely assessed with evaluations covering its operations. Strategically, the Bank notably benefited from corporate evaluations by IDEV that are closely aligned with the Bank’s development agenda for the years to come.
In total, IDEV delivered 11 evaluation products in 2022:
- the Benin Country Strategy and Program Evaluation (2012-2021)
- the Djibouti Country Strategy and Program Evaluation (2011-2020)
- the impact evaluation of a Public Finance Management project in the Democratic Republic of Congo
- the evaluation of the Bank’s Strategy for 2013–2022
- the evaluation of the Bank’s crisis response support to Regional Member Countries in the face of COVID-19
- the synthesis report of the validation of 2020-2021 Project Completion Reports and Expanded Supervision Reports
- the project cluster evaluation of the management of the African Development Fund projects
- the validation of the Equatorial Guinea Country Strategy Paper Mid-Term Review
- the validation of the Niger Country Strategy Paper Mid-Term Review
- the evaluation of the Bank's Non-Sovereign Operations
- the evaluation synthesis on inclusive growth
IDEV produced evaluation knowledge and communication products in the form of briefs, highlights, lessons notes, infographics, and videos for each of the evaluations completed in 2022. Knowledge-sharing efforts were closely aligned with the focus on climate resilience and just energy transition. Within this arena, IDEV produced a background paper containing key highlights and insights from recent evaluations, and Karen Rot-Münstermann, newly appointed Evaluator General, contributed an article entitled “Fostering climate resilience and a just energy transition for Africa through evaluative evidence” to the AfDB Governors’ Digest. IDEV disseminated relevant evaluation documents during the AfDB Annual Meetings, COP27, and the African Economic Conference and added them to a new microsite of targeted knowledge. IDEV also published its triannual magazine eVALUation Matters, on the topics of impact evaluation and building a stronger and more resilient Africa through evaluation; and organized numerous webinars and learning events.
The 2022 edition of IDEV’s flagship event, the AfDB Development Evaluation Week, attracted online participation of over 800, generating fruitful debate on the theme of "Building a Stronger and More Resilient Africa." IDEV further organized a knowledge event in July to disseminate the key results of its 2021 evaluation of the Bank’s Engagement with Civil Society, and a capitalization workshop in September to share the results of the impact evaluation of the Last Mile Connectivity Project in Kenya with Bank staff. Evaluators shared their experience in using robust design methodology for this evaluation at a webinar for members of the Evaluation Cooperation Group of independent evaluation offices of International Financial Institutions and participated in events such as the annual gLOCAL Evaluation Week and an open day for civil society organizations in Benin.
In 2022, evaluation capacity-building was high on IDEV’s agenda. The team responded to high demand for external support to strengthen capacity in evaluation by participating in a leadership Bootcamp for Voluntary Organizations for Professional Evaluation (VOPEs) and in EvalLab, a training workshop organized by the Ivorian Evaluation Initiative (2IEval) for francophone development evaluation stakeholders.
IDEV maintained its technical support to Twende Mbele, a peer learning partnership on M&E among African governments, and the Evaluation Platform for African Development Institutions (EPRADI). IDEV also continued to host the Secretariat of the African Parliamentarians’ Network on Development Evaluation (APNODE) and organized its Annual General Meeting, in Rabat, Morocco. Additionally, IDEV led and actively supported partnerships to build capacity and promote a culture of evaluation, including with organizations such as EvalPartners, CLEAR, the Global Evaluation Initiative (GEI), RFE, UNICEF, UNDP, UN-Women, and the USAID-TSUE Initiative. Internally, trainings were organized for IDEV staff on topics such as evidence gap analysis and mapping, remote outreach and stakeholder engagement, remote data collection, rapid evaluation methods, communications and reporting, and on software packages.
IDEV’s strength at year-end is a tangible outcome of the collaborative spirit and effective sharing of evaluative evidence within the Bank and beyond. With a full work program for 2023, IDEV will continue to build its position as a reference in evaluation for development in Africa.
[1] Language adopted in the Communiqué of the Board of Governors at the AfDB Annual Meetings in May 2022; Algeria, China, Egypt, Eswatini, Namibia, Nigeria and South Africa entered a reservation and proposed “Russia-Ukraine Conflict”.