As development thinking shifts from ‘beneficiary’ to ‘citizen participation’ and from ‘participation as a means’ to ‘participation as a right’, are international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) changing the way they monitor and evaluate their work? Or are they still failing to create systems which demonstrate the outcomes of their interventions and encourage local voices?

An IDS report published by the International NGO Training and Research Centre (INTRAC) assesses how eight UK-based international NGOS use participatory monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems as part of rural development projects in Ethiopia. By exploring differences at field, capital city and headquarter level, the author shows the need to stop treating international NGOs as simple units and to examine the diverse coalitions of interest groups which drive their policies and practices.

The author acknowledges the difficulties of introducing participatory monitoring and evaluation in a country with a long tradition of obedience and paternalism. Ethiopia’s government maintains a firm grip on policy, decides how taxes are collected and spent and, like the regime it replaced, uses local peasant associations to encourage people to achieve centrally-determined goals.

Interviews with local and expatriate international NGO staff and visits to projects showed that:

• Much of what is currently called 'women’s participation’ is a technical fix that leaves unequal local relations between men and women almost completely unchallenged.
• For most staff achieving a balance between the interests of their organisation and their commitment to participant communities is a daily dilemma.
• International NGO respondents within the same project report conflicting accounts of the extent of participation.
• Although international NGOs write at length about empowerment and the need to make space for local workers, field staff can betray centralist attitudes, whilst restructuring processes and language are disempowering.

M&E is still largely a donor-driven process. The predetermined nature of M&E methods and indicators, donor preferences for quantitative indicators and methods and the lack of effective feedback mechanisms (from the field to headquarters all hinder attempts to implement international NGO M&E policy.

A significant number of field staff feel threatened by continuous M&E which they see as a disempowering top-down process which allows them no clearly-defined role. Structured systems built into project planning documents are often transformed by staff into informal M&E systems used in parallel with official ones to build trust and strengthen teamwork.

Ethiopia is far from being a liberal democracy but the government is gradually allowing international NGOs more opportunities to negotiate and interact with local people. International NGOs are urged to explore how they might open more space for Ethiopian community and civil society workers and raise questions about limitations on government accountability and performance.

Global lessons from the study suggest that senior managers should:

• appreciate that final outcomes of change brought about by development projects are highly unpredictable
• work harder to overcome constraints to involving local participants in M&E
• recognise that field staff have considerable skills for innovative thinking and that effective initiatives can come from below as well as from above
• appreciate that the mis-application of formal systems of M&E can potentially lay the foundations for creative innovation
• improve incentive structures that reward managers and staff for innovation, learning and adaptation.

Source(s):
‘Putting policy into practice: participatory monitoring and evaluation in Ethiopia’, International NGO Training and Research Centre (INTRAC), by Esther Mebrahtu 2004

Funded by: The UK Department for International Development ESCOR

id21 Research Highlight: 20 December 2005

Further Information:
Esther Mebrahtu

Contact the contributor: esthermebrahtu2@hotmail.com

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'Understanding organisational learning in NGOs'

'Partnership and performance in the city: can urban NGOs raise their performance?'

'Negotiating NGO management practice'

'Knowledge, power and development agendas: NGOs north and south'

'A partnership of equals? Working with southern NGOs'

'NGOs and capacity building: for what and for whom?'