Monitoring and Evaluation

Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) has long been recognized as a vital aspect of development projects generally and of agriculture and rural development (ARD) projects in particular. The monitoring of project performance consists of the tracking of human, physical and financial resources and the recording of how they are converted into outputs (project goods and services), and in turn, outcomes and impacts.

The GAFSP Monitoring and Evaluation Plan reflects the strong results-oriented nature of the GAFSP fund. It highlights key features of the program, including the development of common indicators to enable monitoring of results across projects and the widespread use of rigorous impact evaluations for all GAFSP investment projects.

Up to 30% of GAFSP investment projects will undergo in-depth impact evaluations using experimental or quasi-experimental methods. The Steering Committee (SC) approved the World Bank's Development Impact Evaluation Initiative's (DIME) workplan to carry out these in-depth impact evaluations for GAFSP. The remaining projects are expected to undergo less in-depth impact evaluations, which will be funded from the individual GAFSP grants.

The design of GAFSP stipulates that once investment or Technical Assistance proposals are approved by the SC, the preparation and implementation – including M&E – of GAFSP projects will follow established guidelines that already exist for the respective a Supervising Entity (SE). In addition, there will be limited M&E functions carried out at the GAFSP program level by the Coordination Unit (CU). This will allow the CU to report aggregated results for GAFSP as a whole and to ensure a level of accountability for GAFSP projects through specific good practices that may not necessarily be required by SEs’ operational policies.

The final version of the GAFSP Monitoring and Evaluation Plan, prepared by the GAFSP CU, was approved by the Steering Committee in February 2011. It describes operational details to be adopted by the GAFSP SEs as well as the CU in carrying out M&E for GAFSP and is consistent with the rules and principles outlined in GAFSP Framework Document, endorsed by the World Bank Board on January 12, 2010.