ReSAKSS holds a technical training workshop on impact evaluation for policy analysis in support of CAADP implementation in the COMESA region on March 16-20, 2015, on ILRI Campus, Nairobi, Kenya. Under the CAADP framework, national governments, funding agencies, regional economic communities and other stakeholders are increasingly interested in using evidence in deciding what kind of agricultural programs work, how, for whom, under what circumstances and at what cost. This need is driven by the past experience where many resources have been spent on development projects by national governments and development partners each year, but often the actual impact on the poor is not empirically provided. For individual program or project in a given country, there is paucity of information on whether the interventions are producing the intended benefits. Quite often many questions remain unanswered such as; could the program or project be better designed to achieve the intended outcomes? Are resources being spent efficiently? These types of questions can only be answered through an impact evaluation, an approach which measures the outcomes of a program intervention in isolation of other possible factors. Although tools for policy analysis exist, most policy-makers and planners are not familiar with them, making policy formulation and impact assessment a rather elusive process.

To address this gap, COMESA Secretariat and ReSAKSS-ECA jointly organized a technical training workshop on impact evaluation for policy analysis in support of CAADP implementation.

The objectives of the workshop were to:

1.    Expose the participants to the theoretical underpinnings and practical applications of impact evaluation.

2.    To equip the participants with the skills necessary to understand, critique and make effective use of evidence arising from impact evaluation.

At the end of the training the participants were expected to have a good understanding of the theory and practice of impact evaluation and also to have acquired skills on how to design, carry out and communicate evidence arising from impact evaluation.

A total of 35 participants attended the meeting (27 men and 8 women) from 9 countries in the East and Central Africa region i.e. Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Zambia, Seychelles and Swaziland.

This article is written by Joseph Karugia, ReSAKSS-ECA Regional Coordinator.