Products and Services

The Evaluation Systems (ES) programme works with country governments and Civil Society Organisations to develop and strengthen M&E systems in order to improve their performance. The programme strengthens country and partner monitoring and evaluation systems by:

• Developing an understanding of how national and subnational evaluation systems link to civil society and other key actors in driving accountability
• Working with partners who will build strong and sustainable systems
• Helping to develop country strategies for strengthening their M&E systems
• Supporting the implementation of country strategies

The Strengthening Legislatures (SL) programme encourages and supports legislatures to use reliable evidence so that governments are more accountable and perform better. Key services offered by this programme are:

• Strengthening the capacity of legislators  and parliamentary staff  to use M&E to better fulfil their functions
• Sharing best practice on effective systems of evidence, including the use of M&E,  in parliaments
• Facilitating dialogue between the executive and the legislature around the development of monitoring and evaluation tools

The Capacity Strengthening (CS) programme strengthens institutional and individual M&E skills and increases knowledge on how to gather and use information. The programme strengthens evaluation capacity through the following interventions: 

• Working with Higher Education Institutions, the public sector and private institutions to support the establishment and improvement of academic and executive short course M&E programmes
• Developing and delivering tailored and open-enrolment training programmes, such as the annual flagship Development Evaluation Training Programme in Africa (DETPA)
• Supporting collaborative efforts between the higher education and training community, evaluators and the public sector to strengthen evaluation capacity building initiatives
• Working collaboratively to develop good practices in the design of M&E curricula

The Technical Advisory (TA) programme provides assistance to both government and private institutions, aimed at strengthening institutional systems of evidence, whiles at the same time driving organisational change towards a culture of evidence use. The services of the programme include:

• Carrying out evaluations to enhance evidence production at institutional level, and to identify and test appropriate approaches to facilitate use
• Reviewing and Building contextually relevant M&E frameworks to promote evidence production for institutions
• Building and testing evaluative tools for evidence production and consumption support decision-making at institutional levels
• Building and promoting evaluative approaches and standards for the impact investing field in Africa

This programme drives the research and learning through CLEAR-AA’s programmatic work and ensures wide dissemination to raise awareness amongst its stakeholders across the continent.  In doing so, it contributes to M&E policy and practice in Africa. The components of this programme include:

• Research on how M&E evidence is used to effect programme and policy improvements in decision-making
• Research on the impact of CLEAR-AA’s evaluation capacity building interventions  
• Research on which relationships/partners are needed to work effectively at country and regional level
• Strengthening the learning emerging from CLEAR-AAs programmatic work and feeding this into the knowledge production at CLEAR-AA
• Driving and convening a Wits Evaluation Community of Practice
• Driving the learning agenda at CLEAR-AA