AHI has a performance management system that is operationalized at various levels: regional, national, site and community (Table 1). The purpose of performance management is to ensure that the program remains focused, relevant and effective in the delivery of its outputs and accelerated impacts.
Table 1. Levels of Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation within the AHI Regional Program
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| Level |
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Mechanisms |
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Responsibilities |
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Purpose |
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| Regional |
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• External Program Management Review
• Annual work plans; annual progress and financial reports; joint planning and review meetings
• Commissioned review by CGIAR; facilitated by ICRAF |
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• Regional Coordinator, Regional Research Team |
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• To review the overall performance of ICRAF and its eco-regional programs with respect to expected MTP and CGIAR outputs
• To check program focus; take strategic management decisions (direction, coverage, content, targets); monitor the alignment of outputs and impacts with work plans; ensure financial accountability; and enable lessons capture across sites/countries |
|
|
|
| National |
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• Participation in planning and review meetings |
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• National focal points in NARI headquarters |
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• To ensure alignment of AHI programmatic focus with national priorities; provide oversight to site accountability |
|
|
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| Site |
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• Annual work plans and reports; periodic monitoring of team member activities and outputs |
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• Site coordinator, site team members |
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• To ensure responsiveness of research activities to farmers' needs; ensure adherence to work plans and budget; document impacts and lessons; build capacity of collaborators; ensure that site and national expectations are in harmony; ensure accountability for resource use; and foster institutionalization of new research methods |
|
|
|
| Community |
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• Participatory planning; participatory M&E |
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• Community leaders, farmer groups, site coordinator, site team members, RRT members |
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• To monitor progress towards the achievement of established objectives; monitor changes in farming systems, livelihoods and community dynamics; negotiate resource allocations and modifications in the approach; strengthen farmer organizations; ensure compatibility of technologies to field conditions; and to increase farmers' confidence and capacity to conduct their own experiments and institutional innovations |
IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES—REGIONAL LEVEL
The purpose of regional-level performance management processes is to monitor the overall progress of AHI within the context of ICRAF and ASARECA Medium Term Plans (MTPs) and CGIAR outputs. Regional-level reviews ensure activities are in line with program focus and outputs and impacts are aligned with work plans, as well as financial accountability. Performance management also enables lessons capture across sites/countries and enables strategic management decisions on program direction, coverage, content and targets to be taken in a timely manner. Regional-level reviews include the following:
Staff Appraisal
As an eco-regional program of the CGIAR, ICRAF undertakes annual staff performance appraisals of AHI staff. This procedure helps to clarify for staff what is required from them in the form of explicit performance standards. It also provides a mechanism whereby staff receive feedback on where they stand with respect to their performance through feedback from supervisors, peers, supervisees and clients. Performance appraisals also ensure that procedures to close the gap between performance standards and actual performance are put into place through concrete strategies for performance development and enhancement.
External Program and Management Review (EPMR)
An EPMR panel is commissioned by the CGIAR to assess progress toward implementation of CGIAR centre MTPs, which include performance targets of ecoregional programmes hosted by each centre. The EPMR is an independently-commissioned review that reports to the Science Council after sharing their findings with ICRAF's Board of Trustees, Senior Leadership Team (SLT), Theme Leaders and Regional Coordinators. The Panel further looks at the balance between CGIAR centres' strategic research and development-support efforts. In the case of AHI, the EPMR is conducted through ICRAF.
Regional Steering Committee
The AHI Regional Steering Committee (RSC) is composed of Director Generals of National Agricultural Research Institutes (NARIs) in countries where AHI works, representatives of host institutions (ASARECA and ICRF) and donor representatives. The Chair of the Steering Committee is the Director General of the NARI that hosts AHI, in this case Dr. Denis Kyetere of the National Agricultural Research Organization of Uganda. The RSC provides strategic policy guidance to enhance program performance, including approval of any changes in strategic direction of the program and alignment of annual work plans, budgets and reports with key strategy documents (i.e. MTPs). The RSC ensures that the priority of AHI research agenda is in line with the national agricultural research priorities, and is convened during key stages of program evolution.
ASARECA Committee of Directors (CD)
The ASARECA CD is composed of NARI Director Generals (DGs) from all the ASARECA countries in East and Central Africa. The CD ensures that AHI's mandate is relevant to national and regional agricultural research priorities, approves annual work plans and budgets, and ensures that annual reports and impact assessments are in line with work plans and donor commitments.
Program-Level Reviews
In 2006, AHI will design and conduct a standard impact assessment to track progress, outcomes and impacts since the inception phase across all projects and sites. The impact assessment will encompass all dimensions of the INRM approach, including changes in plot-level technological innovation, productivity, livelihood impacts, collective action and natural resource governance, and institutional change. It will seek to establish causal linkages between new methods piloted in AHI benchmark sites and the observed outcomes and impacts.
IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES—NATIONAL LEVEL
Within host countries, national focal points in NARI headquarters help to guide the overall strategic direction and performance of AHI in-country. This is done through participation in Regional Steering Committee meetings and national planning and review meetings, and at times through site team meetings and field visits as well. National focal points ensure the alignment of the AHI programmatic focus with national priorities and provided oversight to site programmatic and financial accountability.
IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES—SITE LEVEL
The overall purpose of site-level reviews is to ensure that research objectives and practices are responsive to farmers' needs, align activities with work plans and budgets, and ensure accountability for resource use. Mechanisms for site-level review include site team planning and review meetings, process documentation and participatory monitoring and evaluation. These reviews often have many positive spin-offs, including documentation of impacts and lessons, capacity-building of collaborators and alignment of site, national and regional expectations. Some site teams have been innovative in using these reviews to create new opportunities to institutionalize new research methods within their own and partner organizations.
With financial support from IDRC, in 1999 AHI initiated a systematic effort to mainstream participatory monitoring and evaluation practices into site activities. An improved participatory performance assessment framework was introduced to build the capacity of stakeholders within AHI's benchmark locations to reflect on their performance and to draw lessons from some of AHI's key areas of methodology development and behavioral change. The key areas included: participatory research; farmer innovation systems; use of integrated teams, partnerships and multi-institutional collaborations; and scaling up. A Regional Research Fellow (RRF) was recruited to develop and implement the PM&E component, and a project inception meeting was held at ICRAF to establish the regional planning, monitoring and evaluation system in AHI. The workshop agenda included awareness raising, development of a performance assessment framework to improve PM&E, alignment of the framework to the overall program, and articulation of desired products and approaches towards achieving outputs and impacts at different levels.
More recently, an iterative social learning process led by RRT members and site teams has been utilized to instill practical skills in process documentation (reflecting on methods used and their impact from the perspective of site team members) and integrate this with community-level PM&E. Frequent monitoring of progress has been found to be essential in ensuring challenges encountered in implementing integrated approaches to NRM are identified and addressed in a timely manner. Annual site workshops with site and regional teams have also been used to strengthen planning and review procedures, and to jointly tackle bottlenecks faced in implementation.
Site-level performance monitoring, evaluation and management have led to:
- Shared understanding of key learning areas, a framework for assessing learning in these areas, and identification of enabling and constraining factors;
- Documentation of researchers' experience with key learning areas;
- Identification of areas that require backstopping by the project and suggested strategies for backstopping; and
- Increased awareness of farmers' perceptions of change processes, and greater receptivity of researchers to these opinions.
IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES—COMMUNITY LEVEL
The purpose of community-level reviews is to monitor progress towards the achievement of objectives negotiated and agreed upon during community-level diagnosis and planning. Community-level reviews consist of informal visits by Site Coordinators and theme leaders to monitor progress across diverse activities, more formal participatory monitoring and evaluation events, and periodic impact assessments. These reviews help to monitor changes in farming systems, livelihoods and community dynamics; help to negotiate resource allocations; strengthen farmer organizations; ensure compatibility of technologies to field conditions; adjust innovations and activities according to challenges faced; and help to increase farmers' confidence and capacity to conduct their own experiments and institutional innovations. Participants include community and watershed leaders, farmer groups, site coordinators, site team members and regional research team members.
