The Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD (IOE) participated in the 8th African Evaluation Association (AfrEA) 2017 International Conference: Evaluation of the sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): opportunities and challenge for Africa, held at Kampala, Uganda from 27-31 March.

The 8th AfrEA 2017 International Conference aimed to promote exchange between researchers, academia, emerging evaluators and practitioners on demand and supply of credible evaluative evidence in support of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Africa. It also built capacity to design, manage and use evaluations to help governments achieve their national and international development agendas, particularly around the SDGs and the Africa 2063 Agenda.

The direct objectives included, to: strengthen the Volunteer Organization of Professional Evaluators to work with national governments to advance the evaluation agenda; provide space for sharing experiences to enhance national evaluation capacities, showcase the use of evaluative evidence in Africa for the development of emerging evaluators.

Fabrizio Felloni, Deputy Director of IOE led a session on evaluation architecture to support learning and accountability and delivered a presentation on IOE’s experience as an example. The session focused on how IOE produces a range of evaluation products that meet the twin purpose of learning and accountability; focus and intended audiences may differ on different products; IFAD has institutionalized mechanisms for feedback and response to recommendations which are effective and for ensuring consistent follow up on evaluations and learning primarily takes place during the process and through special events.