The Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD (IOE), the Planning and Programming Directorate of the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries, and the Agriculture Transformation Agency of Ethiopia organized an Evaluation Capacity Development workshop on 6 November in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The learning workshop aimed at enhancing the understanding of evaluation principles and approaches and use of evidence-based evaluations for increased Government performance in the quest to improve development effectiveness.

Results-based monitoring and evaluation can be used to better manage policies, programmes and projects. Additionally, it is important to build country systems for evaluation so that sector-wide developments are properly understood.  This is particularly important for Ethiopia as the country is trying to catalyse change.  There are, for instance, many innovations that are ongoing and piloted on a small scale and should be evaluated before scaling up.  Thus evaluation would help the country to learn from catalytic initiatives as well as what works and does not work and why.

Participants for the workshop included Government officials from selected Ministries such as the Ministry  of Agriculture and Natural Resources and the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries and affiliated institutions (Ethiopian Institute for Agricultural Research, Horticulture Agency, Federal Cooperatives Agency, Ethiopian Seeds Enterprise, etc.), National Planning Commission, responsible for planning, monitoring and evaluation and policy making, the Ethiopian Evaluation Association (EEvA), research and academia, development organizations, NGOs as well as regional institutions active in evaluation capacity development, professionals of evaluation, directors and M&E staff agriculture projects and other professionals in related working areas.