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The assignment was part and parcel of a broader evaluation of the Bank’s Program Based operations (PBOs) for the period 2012-17 led by IDEV. Consultancy input consisted of four tasks:

• a portfolio-wide project review, analysing documentation associated with each operation;
• a focused institutional comparison with two comparator institutions;
• an online survey collecting the views of officials from partner governments and Bank staff engaged in PBOs;
• Cluster evaluation on energy, including the following five country case studies: Angola, Burkina Faso, Comoros, Nigeria and Tanzania.

The objectives of the wider evaluation were to provide credible evidence regarding how the Bank is programming, designing and managing its PBOs as well as their performance. In addition, it aimed to identify lessons and factors that have hindered or enabled good results based on solid evidence.

The report is available at:

http://idev.afdb.org/en/document/independent-evaluation-afdbs-program-based-operations-2012-2017

The overall objective of the future governance programme was to contribute to poverty reduction, economic growth and good governance in Laos.

The specific objective of this assignment was to support the EU and the Government of Lao PDR in the identification and formulation of a range of possible interventions that can be developed into a governance programme, which includes both public administration and aspects of economic governance, namely public financial management.

The proposed interventions will improve, inter alia, transparency and accountability of PFM, promote fair and transparent domestic tax systems, improve domestic revenue mobilisation and procurement, increase the capacity and control of oversight bodies, strengthen the capacity of public administration in service delivery at national, provincial and local level while accompanying the institutional framework and the decentralisation process.

The overall objective of this study was to evaluate the Support Program for the Rural Transport Sub-Sector, Phase 2 (Programme d’Appui au Sous-secteur de Transport Rural, phase 2 - PASTR II), which consisted of three components:

• Improvement of accessibility through the maintenance and development of rural transport infrastructures;
• Improving mobility in rural areas through the implementation of public transport projects using intermediate means of transport;
• Capacity building of actors for the regulation, development, management and maintenance / of rural transport infrastructure.

The evaluation adopted a mixed methods approach to assess the overall implementation of the PASTR II, its relevance and effectiveness, as well as its viability and impact.

From a quantitative point of view, the propensity score matching method was chosen to assess the impact of PASTR II on the socio-economic conditions of the beneficiaries. For this purpose, a household survey was conducted in 40 districts of Benin (20 beneficiaries and 20 non-beneficiaries of the PASTR II).

On the qualitative side, the team conducted thematic group discussions with beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries as well as interviews with the local public administration and the general population

The objectives of the evaluation were to:

• support the decision-making, both at EU strategic (planning) level, and at the level of the design of the action programmes /interventions;
• feed into the reflection on the revision of future development policies in view of the recent adoption of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda;
• demonstrate whether already on-going/planned IPA (I) II, ENPI/ENI, DCI and EDF action programmes/interventions in the area of social protection have taken on board the latest lessons learnt from the previous programming period;
• provide recommendations on the best way to approach and improve its support to the development of social protection systems, in partner countries both in terms of the use of policy dialogue and financial assistance;
• contribute to the preparation and adjustment of action programmes, namely for IPA II, ENI, DCI and EDF assistance to the extent possible;
• feed in the Mid-term Review of financial instruments;
• feed in Mid-term Reviews of country/region multi-annual indicative programmes.

The evaluation used the five standard OECD/DAC evaluation criteria, namely relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability. In addition, the evaluation also looked at the EU added value and the 3Cs.

The evaluation focused on EU support (policy dialogue and financial assistance) provided for the development of social protection systems in partner countries, more specifically on the social insurance and social assistance measures to address the following risks and needs: unemployment, parental responsibilities, sickness and healthcare, work accidents/employment injuries disability, loss of a spouse or parent, old age, housing and social exclusion.

The evaluation covered:

• IPA I beneficiary countries;
• ENPI partner countries;
• Countries covered by DCI and EDF.

The evaluation was conducted in four phases

• An Inception Phase, focusing on the design and the methodology of the evaluation including the reconstruction of the intervention logic and the compilation of an inventory;
• A Desk Phase, focusing on gathering and analysing existing data and information (through literature/document reviews and interviews/focus groups/surveys);
• A Field Phase, including preparation of field missions, visits to the case study countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia*, Malawi, Moldova, Montenegro, Morocco, Palestine*) and drafting of country reports;
• A Synthesis Phase, producing a final report and dissemination of results to concerned stakeholders.

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland (MFA) commissions regularly meta-evaluations in order to synthesise the findings, explore the issues and assess the reliability of the decentralised evaluations.

The assessment of the evaluation reports includes all decentralised evaluation reports conducted between January 2015 and June 2017. The meta-evaluation consists of two parts:

• Meta-evaluation of the decentralised evaluation reports and their corresponding terms of references.
• Meta-analysis of reliable evaluation findings on Finland's development cooperation verified against the OECD-DAC evaluation criteria demonstrating how Finnish development policy goals have been achieved based on findings in different reports. The meta-analysis also sums up the major issues evident in current development cooperation emerging from the decentralised evaluation reports. The synthesis will conclude what are the main reasons for success or challenges in development co-operation projects and programs and what are the lessons learned based on the findings from evaluation reports.

The purpose of the meta-evaluation is twofold: first, the meta-evaluation helps the MFA to improve the evaluation reports, the evaluation management practices and the overall evaluation capacity development. It also provides an overall picture of the current evaluation portfolio which helps the MFA to identify possible gaps. Second, the meta-analysis is expected to aggregate data and bring forward issues and lessons learned emerging from the evaluation reports as well as give recommendations which will help the MFA to improve the development cooperation. The meta-analysis will sum up what kind of strengths and challenges regarding Finnish development cooperation are identified in different evaluation reports.

Final report available here: https://um.fi/documents/384998/385866/meta_evaluation_report_2018

• Ensure maximum visibility of EU cooperation activities in Sierra Leone.
• Raise awareness of EU work on specific sectors through high media impact activities.

The assignment was part and parcel of a broader evaluation of the Bank’s Program Based operations (PBOs) for the period 2012-17 led by the Independent Development Evaluation unit of the African Development Bank (AfDB). Consultancy input consisted of a cluster evaluation on private sector enabling environment (PSE).

The objectives of the wider evaluation were to provide credible evidence regarding how the AfDB is programming, designing and managing its PBOs as well as their performance. In addition, it aimed to identify lessons and factors that have hindered or enabled good results based on solid evidence.

The objective of the PSE cluster evaluation was to assess the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of the PSE-related PBOs conducted in different countries, subsequently synthesising the results so as to, in particular, draw relevant lessons for the future design and management of PBOs by the AfDB.

The PSE cluster evaluation covered the following five case countries: Egypt, Ghana, Mali, Morocco, and Seychelles.

The principal objectives of the evaluation were to present to the European Union’s external cooperation services, to the partner government and, where relevant, to the general public:

• an overall, totally independent assessment of the results of the intervention of PAI II with a particular focus on the project’s results in relation to its objectives;
• the principal lessons learnt from the intervention and recommendations in order to improve the ongoing measures as well as future actions.

Besides gaining knowledge about the assessment of the results and of the experiences made throughout the implementation of the four components of PAI II, the final evaluation of the project under the 11th EDF was particularly supposed to guide the continuation of EU support for state consolidation. These new support activities, whichwere foreseen and formulated in a way differing from the implementing modalities of PAI II, were supposed to build on the achievements of PAI II in terms of realized activities as well as in terms of managing the assistance.

The global objective of this project was to contribute to Turkey’s efforts in establishing well functional migration management system in line with new normative framework and EU acquis.

The specific objectives of this project were as follows:

• To support the DGMM to facilitate the nationality determination process of the irregular migrants and international protection applicants through Needs Assessment Report and Study visits;
• To support the DGMM in preparation of Terms of Reference and Technical Specifications documents for the project of “Capacity Building for Effective Nationality Determination”.

The project provides a comprehensive analysis of wildlife trade between Mexico and the EU (whether legally or illegally traded; and whether CITES listed or non-CITES listed species); in order to improve the implementation of CITES and other related policies related to tackling illegal wildlife trade, through closer collaboration on wildlife trade policies, as well as a better understanding of both Parties legal and illegal wildlife market. Moreover, it provides a clear and updated characterization of the legal and illegal trade in wildlife between Mexico and the EU, and on the basis of this, provides recommendations towards the development and implementation of actions aiming at ensuring that wildlife trade is sustainable, legal, and traceable, while providing economic incentives to the main stakeholders of their value chain (from the local and indigenous communities to the end consumer markets, e.g. European industry).

Specific objectives of this assignment are:

• Identification and prioritization of species (whether CITES listed or not) subject to high levels of legal and illegal trade between Mexico and the EU;
• Based on an exhaustive trade analysis of the selected species, development of recommendations for the establishment and implementation of actions to strengthen and improve bilateral collaboration and information exchange of pre-selected species in order to promote that wildlife trade is sustainable, legal, and traceable.