Fourth Meeting of the Forum of Stakeholders on ECOWAS Monitoring and Evaluation System: The Director General of WAI presents the results of the Study on the Evaluation of the Regional Strategic Plan 2011-2015, Lome, Togo, 5-8 August 2015
Organized by the ECOWAS Commission in collaboration with the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ), the Fourth Meeting of the Forum of Stakeholders on EOWAS Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) System, held in Lomé, Togo, 5-8 August 2015 was attended by the Representatives of Member States, Specialized Institutions and Agencies of the Commission.
The overall objective of the meeting was to con duct a thorough analysis of the progress in the preparation process of the Community Strategic Framework (CSF) 2016-2020 and to examine the proposed M & E system.
The opening ceremony encompassed the welcome address of the Head of the ECOWAS National Unit in Togo, the speech of the representative of the GIZ, the key note remarks of the Vice-President of ECOWAS Commission and the opening speech of the Togolese State Minister for Economy, Finance and Development Planning.
ECOWAS Vice-President, Dr. Toga Gaweya McIntosh, stressed the strategic objectives and the relevance of the Forum as a platform for ongoing dialogue in order to strengthen the ECOWAS M&E system and to facilitate the preparation of the Community performance reports. He also underlined the Forum's achievements since its creation in 2011 and placed a particular emphasis on the need to inform timely the ECOWAS citizens about the state of affairs of the regional integration process, indicating that the meeting would serve to better inform the participants on their respective roles as key players as part of their contribution to the finalization and implementation of the Strategic Community Framework (CSF) 2016-2020.
Stressing that the delay in the development process of the CSF was due to the Ebola crisis and had to be filled by the active cooperation of each stakeholder, the Vice-President indicated that substantial work had been carried out to finalize the document by the end of December 2015 and to start its implementation as soon as possible. He added that the proposed CSF had taken into account the results of the evaluation of the 2011 – 2015 Regional Strategic Plan. The Vice President expressed his entire satisfaction toward the cooperation between ECOWAS and GIZ in key regional integration sectors, in particular the strengthening of the strategic planning and the creation of an effective M & E system. In the name of the Community, he extended his sincere acknowledgements to the Minister of State for Economy, Finance and Development Planning of the Republic of Togo for his kind cooperation in the framework of the preparation of the 4th meeting of the Forum.
The outline and lessons learned from the evaluation of the 2011-2015 Regional Strategic Plan (RSP) were presented by Prof. Djénéba TRAORE, Director General of the West Africa Institute (WAI ), in her capacity as coordinator of the evaluation study. She pointed out that the study funded by GIZ, was conducted in six countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo) by a team of consultants and essentially consisted of: i) assessing the six priority goals of Regional Strategic Plan (RSP) using appropriate criteria of relevancy, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability; ii) formulating recommendations as inputs/contributions to the 2016-2020 Community Strategic Framework (CSF); iii) providing inputs for CSF especially necessary data for the setting up of its M&E framework baselines.
It has to be noted that the six priority goals of PSR 2011-2015 are the followings:
1. Promote good governance, justice, and upgrade the conflict prevention management and resolution mechanism.
2. Promote infrastructure development and a competitive business environment.
3. Sustain development and cooperation in the region.
4. Deepen socio-economic and monetary integration.
5. Reinforce institutional capacity.
6. Strengthen the mechanism for integration into the global market.
The study emphasizes the achievements of ECOWAS, although many constraints since its inception on 28 May, 1975. The document draw attention to significant achievements in the domain of integration, development and cooperation; e.g. the West Africa Monetary Zone (WAMZ), ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme (ETLS) and the Common External Tariff (CET); Regional peace and security – creation of ECOMOG Peace Keeping Force, conflict resolution in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire, contribution in the management of the Malian crisis in 2012; free movement of persons and goods across the West African sub-region (e.g. ECOWAS Passport, abolition of entry visa); Macro-economic policy and structural convergence.
WAI Director General then shared the major recommendations of the study in the form of actions to be taken, namely:
- Develop together the CSF and other related documents in order to enhance the needed synergy;
- Involve all the stakeholders of the process from the beginning to the end in order to increase awareness and implementation regarding the CSF;
- Coordinate the activities of the Strategic Planning and those of the Monitoring and Evaluation in order to facilitate and enhance the implementation of the CSF;
- Adoption by the Commission of the Results based Monitoring (RBM) in order to allow an effective implementation of the CSF;
- Build the human resources capacity in order to promote efficient delivery of services especially in the projects and programmes of the CSF;
Prof. Traoré closed her presentation in outlining the major challenges identified by the study in the implementation process of the CSF 2016-2020. These challenges concern mainly technical conditions and cooperation with the directorates and services and target notably the following specific activities:
- Formulation of outputs expected from activities in the work plans;
- Assessment of implementation of planned activities;
- Budget allocation to activities according to implementation capacity;
- Implementation strategy during the conception of work plans;
- Ownership of the Strategic Plan (including its MTAP);
- Capacity of directorates and services to formulate and manage their strategic frameworks;
- Improvement in skills for RBM in order to implementation the CSF effectively;
- Additional human resources for strategic planning and M&E;
- Adequate resources and funding for the purpose of reinforcing institutional capacity of the activity areas of ECOWAS Member States, Institutions and Specialized Agencies.
The participants of the meeting agreed that the evaluation report will be submitted in the third quarter of 2015, to ECOWAS Council of Ministers, after its technical validation by the M & E Coordination Committee.
The progress report on the preparation of the CSF was presented by the Director of Strategic Planning of EOWAS Commission, Mr. Essien Abel Essien. He emphasized the five strategic goals and their objectives. His presentation also highlighted the specific role of the different stakeholders (Member States, Institutions and Specialised Agencies) in the CSF finalization process and the roadmap for the validation of the document in the last quarter of 2015 and its implementation starting from January 2016.
During the discussions, the participants mainly emphasized the need to take into account i) the lessons learned from the evaluation of the Strategic Regional Plan 2011 - 2015; ii ) the improvement of the involvement of the stakeholders of the process (roadmap and visibility) ; iii) further reflection on the general guidelines of the CSF; iv) the implementation of the Results based Management (RBM) in strategic planning as well as in monitoring and evaluation.
The M&E draft system for the CSF was presented by the consultants responsible for its development. For each strategic goal of the CSF and priority area, the consultants presented the list of outcomes, indicators, baselines, targets and sources of information.
The meeting unanimous approved the proposal formulated by the Vice-President of the ECOWAS Commission in his key note remarks regarding the extension of the Forum to Non State Actors and asked the ECOWAS Commission to invite civil society, private sector and research representatives in the 5th meeting of the Forum.
The meeting was chaired by the representative of Senegal, State currently holding the rotating presidency of ECOWAS.