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September 2007
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News from the GEF Evaluation Office GEF Country Portfolio Evaluation for Africa The GEF Council has requested the GEF Evaluation Office to evaluate GEF’s support portfolio at the country level, exploring these key areas:
The Office has conducted three evaluations at the country level: Costa Rica (2006), Samoa (2007), and Philippines (2007). The Council in its last session in June 2007 endorsed an increase of the country portfolio evaluations to cover four countries in Africa in fiscal year 2008: South Africa, Cameroon, Benin, and Madagascar. The countries were selected through a stratified, randomized selection and by a set of strategic criteria, such as historic and RAF allocations, as well as experience with the environment sector, size and diversity of the portfolio, and membership in special groups, such as Least Developed Countries.
Claudio Volonte, with assistance from Timothy Ranja, will conduct the evaluations. The following staff will manage each country: Claudio Volonte (South Africa), Siv Tokle (Madagascar), Lee Alexander Risby (Cameroon), and Sandra Romboli (Benin). Focal Points from each country are now being consulted to organize a first visit to the countries in September 2007. The purpose of these first visits will be to present to the Focal Points and key GEF stakeholders the evaluation objectives, scope, methodologies, and work plan and to receive feedback on any particular issues to be included in the evaluations. The main output of these evaluations will be a report for submission to the Council at its April 2008 meeting. For information on the terms of reference for Country Portfolio Evaluations and the evaluations for Costa Rica, Samoa and the Philippines, please visit the web site www.thegef.org in the Ongoing Evaluations section or contact Timothy Ranja at tranja@thegef.org.
RAF Mid-Term Evaluation The GEF Council in September 2005 requested the Evaluation Office (at that time the Office of Monitoring and Evaluation), in collaboration with the Secretariat and Implementing and Executing Agencies, to prepare for Council’s consideration a Mid-Term Evaluation of the Resource Allocation Framework after two years of implementation. The Evaluation Office is now beginning the preparation for the Mid-Term Evaluation and has written an approach paper. The Office welcomes comments, which will feed into the development of a terms of reference for the Mid-Term Evaluation. This is the first opportunity to provide inputs and there will be further opportunities to comment on the terms of reference in September 2007. Please note that the terms of reference will be presented to Council in November 2007. All comments on the approach paper should be sent to RAFevaluation@thegef.org by August 17th 2007.
The approach paper can be found by clicking on the link below:
International Workshop—Central Asia The Evaluation Office is preparing a regional workshop on evaluating climate change and development to take place in the second half of this year in Astana, Kazakhstan. This workshop will give Central Asian countries the opportunity to discuss and exchange experiences in evaluating climate change issues. The discussions will pave the way for a more active participation of Central Asian countries in the 2008 International Workshop on Evaluating Climate Change and Development (www.esdevaluation.org), also organized by the Evaluation Office, in Alexandria, Egypt, for May 2008. This workshop has the potential to identify local evaluation skills and experiences. The Swiss government has generously contributed for the implementation of this regional exercise. An official announcement inviting these countries will be sent in the next few weeks. Interested professionals are advised to visit www.esdevaluation.org for more information. |
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