Benin

The Wehubit 2.0 programme is Enabel's flagship D4D/innovation programme working on Digital Social Innovations (DSIs). This independent evaluation assesses the performance of Wehubit 2.0 against its objectives, with a focus on relevance, coherence, efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability and impact. It follows Enabel’s evaluation standards and includes a field visit in Dakar (Senegal). The evaluation approach combines document review and stakeholder consultation to generate evidence-based findings and practical recommendations, and is implemented within the ToR’s fixed reporting milestones.

The Benin Gender Equality Support Programme (PAEG) aims to strengthen gender equality among the Beninese population and thereby sustainably reduce the socio-economic vulnerability of women in Benin.

The programme focuses in particular on:

• increased support in the fight against gender-based violence (GBV),
• improving support for women’s leadership and the promotion of peace,
• building the technical and institutional capacity of the SDC’s partners to enable crosscutting implementation of transformative gender and the Leave No One Behind (LNOB) principal,
• advocacy and policy dialogue with the government to improve coordination and promote gender equality.

The implementation of the programme will favour a participatory approach according to the “make things happen” principle (stakeholder approach). Within this context, the decentralised structures of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Micro Finance (MASM) will be the central actors of the programme and will work on setting up a decentralised management system for social action, to ensure the sustainabilty of the activities. The role of civil society organisations (CSOs) will be to implement the strategy promoting women’s leadership, whilst the programme will support the advocacy / policy dialogue carried out by the TFPs and the CSOs to better institutionalise gender at macro, meso and micro levels.

The Programme of Support to Local Governance and the Strengthening of Territorial Attractiveness

Attractiveness (AGORA) aims to ensure that women, men, youth and children have access to quality basic public services in attractive and secure territories that offer a sustainable environment, through the creation of conditions conducive to local economic development.

Specific outcomes:

• Outcome 1: The municipalities have strengthened competencies in production engineering and delivery of quality and equitable basic public services, in a sustainable, attractive, secure and cross-border cooperation environment.
• Outcome 2: The territorial areas have framework conditions that are attractive to economic actors and favourable to local development.
• Outcome 3: The legal, political and institutional environment is favourable to strengthening decentralisation, local governance and regional development

The program will strengthen partners at both the macro and meso levels. These are the ministries in charge of decentralization, the internal affairs, and the environment through their technical structures dealing with the targeted sectors: the National Association of Communes of Benin (ANCB), the Prefectures of Borgou, Alibori, Atacora, and Donga, two (3) regional associations at the heart of the program's implementation, ADéCoB, APlDA, and ACAD, which cover twenty-seven (27) communes. Each of these actors has an annual work plan containing actions related to the objectives of the program.

PARTICIP-REID CARE's mandate specifically revolves around the overall operational and strategic coordination and monitoring of the Program, accompaniment, training and capacity building of the program's actors, and capitalization and management of the Program's knowledge.

The objective of this facility is to improve the overall quality of the NDICI Rapid Response and Peace, Stability and Conflict Prevention thematic areas by providing high quality research services.

We will provide the FPI with flexible and ad hoc research services and prepare literature reviews and rapid assistance reports in the thematic areas specified below.

The contractor undertook the formulation of an Action Document (AD) to implement a regional program addressing illicit trafficking and transnational organized crime in selected West African and neighboring Central African countries. This included providing all necessary inputs and conducting comprehensive analysis, documentation review, fact-finding work, and consultations to propose possible options/scenarios for program focus and intervention logic. This work identified key strategic questions/issues to support informed discussions with relevant EU Delegations and other key stakeholders

The overall objective was to evaluate the Results-Based Financing (RBF) for Low Carbon Energy Access Facility within the Energising Development (EnDev) Programme. The specific purposes of this evaluation were (i) to assess the performance of the RBF Facility over the period 2012-2020 against key OECD/DAC evaluation criteria, (ii) to understand and disseminate what had worked in which circumstances and why, and (iii) to derive lessons learned and recommendations for future programmes in RBF, energy access support through private sector development, and climate finance more broadly.

EnDev piloted an RBF scheme offering incentive payments to private sector market actors in the low-carbon off-grid energy sector in developing countries. Payments were made against pre-specified results achieved in delivery and sustainable operation of modern energy technologies and services.The aim of the RBF Facility within the global EnDev programme was to (i) increase access to modern energy services in developing countries (including vulnerable groups) (ii) through the use of decentralised renewable energy products and services, (iii) delivered as market-based approaches through private sector actors.

The scope of the evaluation encompassed 17 different RBF projects within the global EnDev programme. The evaluation focused on market changes and private sectors responses – such as market efficiency, business development, distribution strategies and technology adoption –, but also analysed the consumer perspective and the interaction with sector policies and regulation by national governments.

Outputs included:

• Inception Report.
• Baseline Report (review of existing baseline studies).
• Internal Process Review.
• A Mid-term Evaluation, including a set of project evaluations and a portfolio review.
• Deep impact studies of one selected country project in Tanzania.
• A cross-portfolio survey targeting RBF participants.
• Final Evaluation, including a set of project evaluations and a portfolio review.
• Concept notes for the various evaluation products.
• Networking conferences with individual projects to foster knowledge-sharing and learning experiences based on the above products and between projects.

Nine countries were targeted for field and remote evaluation: Bangladesh, Benin, Cambodia, Kenya, Peru, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam.

The objectives of the evaluation were as follow:

• Draw lessons learned from the implementation of the FBSA from the results observed in terms of food security with its 4 dimensions (summative evaluation).
• Assess the measures that have been taken to integrate the issue of agriculture and food security into Belgian cooperation.
• Assess the specificity and added value of the multi-stakeholder and multi-dimensional approach for Belgian Cooperation in the field of food security.

Thus, the evaluation is i) backward-looking, covering the implementation of the BFFS in its multidimensional approach based on the four pillars of food security (FAO) and its multi-actor approach; and ii) forward-looking, covering the food security dimension of the new programming of Belgian cooperation. The temporal scope extends from 2010, the year of the creation of the BFFS, to the time of the evaluation in 2019.

The evaluation team conducted 6 country case studies, notably for the five countries in which a BFFS multi-actor programme was carried out from 2012 to 2019: Mali, Mozambique, Burundi, Tanzania and Benin. A sixth case study was carried out on Guinea where a new bilateral programme had been launched, in order to meet the second objective which is to assess the measures taken to integrate agriculture and food security into the new programming of Belgian cooperation. In addition, an online survey was conducted among all actors involved in the implementation of the BFFS programmes.

The published report can be found here: https://diplomatie.belgium.be/sites/default/files/downloads/fbsa-fr-digital-complet.pdf

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

This assignment provided a coherent proposal to ECOWAS and EU for the strengthening of coordination and cooperation in security in West Africa and the implementation of programmes dealing with specific threats.

It gave sufficient background information and justifications to enable the ECOWAS and EU to make an informed decision on specific objectives and of the projects' implementation modalities.

The specific objective of this assignment was to prepare all the necessary elements of 4 different Action Documents to implement 4 potential projects covering respectively areas A, B, C and D.(Area A: Border Management, Area B: Enhancing Cybersecurity in ECOWAS region, Area C: Support to GIABA, Area D: Fighting against illicit trafficking).

For each area A,B,C and D, it was required to proceed to:

• an identification of issues, strategical orientations and priority intervention areas
• a formulation of the project under 11th EDF (Phase II).

This request was part of the Justice Support Project of which the general objective was to contribute to strengthening the rule of law and the promotion of democracy in Benin by improving governance, fighting corruption and respecting human rights.

Its specific objective was to help Benin improve both access to fair and high quality justice, and the detention and reintegration conditions of prisoners. In doing so, the JSP has supported the implementation of the sectoral policy in the field of justice by addressing the above three major problems identified, through: modernising the central administration of the Ministry of Justice, Legislation and Human Rights (MJLHR); ensuring better access to justice; and improving detention conditions with the aim of aligning them to international standards and contributing to the reintegration of prisoners.

The specific objective of this contract was to support the Directorate of Programming and Forecasting (DPF) and other directorates of the Ministry of Justice and Legislation (MJL) in implementing the activities envisaged within PE2 of the JSP and the related work plan.

The technical contractor has therefore supported the implementation of the activities envisaged within PE2 of the JSP which required technical assistance, and has provided the services listed below. In addition to the mobilisation of expertise in the fields mentioned, the contract required coordination of the experts involved. Moreover, the contractor has ensured continuity with the actions initiated during the implementation of PE1 and that the MJL authorities completely approve the results.