This is a presentation on the notes and lessons from the APRM Monitoring and Evaluation process in South Africa. Full article as published in the Africa Insight Journal can be obtained from http://www.sabinet.co.za/abstracts/afrins/afrins_v41_n4_a3.html

1. Navigating
Participatory
Monitoring and
Evaluation: notes
and lessons from
the CSO African
Peer Review
Mechanism
Monitoring Project
(AMP) in South
Africa
Ogochukwu
Nzewi (PHD)

2. Intro and context
 A discussion of notes and lessons
1. Asks how much systemization and rationality one can
expect within a PM&E process?
2. Should legitimacy of PM&E process be ascribed based on
the participatory component?
3. If so how about other legitimising standards such as validity
and reliability of your methods, tools and instruments?
 In July 2010, the African Peer Review Mechanism
Monitoring Project (AMP) was launched in
Johannesburg
 AMP:
 To build capacity among CSOs for M&E of the
implementation of the APRM National Programmes of
Action (NPoA)
 establish a core group of CSOs who have the capacity to
track the implementation of the APRM National
Programmes of Action.
 Experience and lessons sharing on recommendations

3. APRM in South Africa
 APRM established in 2003, lauded as “Africa‟s Innovative
Thinking on Governance”
 voluntary accession by states
 A dual approach: self assessment = Country Self-
Assessment Report CSAR) ; external evaluation by a
Country Review Mission (CRM) = Country Review Report
(Country Review Report). Based on the report, country
prepares and commits to a National Programme of Action
(NPoA)
 South Africa acceded to the APRM in 2004.
 2006: Conducted and submitted its own Country Self-
Assessment Report (CSAR).
 2007: the South African external review was completed
resulting in the Country Review Report (CRR).

4. PM&E
 Transformative PM&E (Latin America and parts of
Asia) sensitivity and affability to social problems
 PM&E objectives, principles and process
determinants are hinged on decisions from
engagements with stakeholders
 PM&E is seen as a useful good governance tool in
monitoring and evaluation of development projects
and programs as it establishes legitimacy to M and E
findings
 PM&E produces lessons for stakeholders and there is
a greater sense of ownership in findings which
motivate the development of action plans and
encourages greater accountability for stakeholders
and society at large

5. AMP as a PM&E process
 Implies:
 Process issues will focus on the critical
matters affecting participation as a point
of departure in M&E
 Who is monitoring, what is being
monitored and weighing and negotiating
interests and goals of stakeholders. Estrella
(2002)

6. Who monitors?
 AMP Participatory framework
1. A central working team
2. CSO clusters
3. Government
4 Participatory phases
1. scoping and planning workshop,
2. training workshop in which CSOs were invited
to propose what to monitor
3. the third stage was the knowledge generation
stage which included data gathering, analysis
and report writing
4. validation and „rating‟

7. Who monitors?
 Lessons:
 Ownership: balancing the objectives of project with
stakeholders frames
 Commitment: Levels of commitment hinged on
different interest factors. Commitment from
stakeholders is not always sustainable.
 Representativeness: It is possible that participation is
not exhaustive. Decisions on who should be involved
still rests with the convener, however setting limits and
making decisions on who should be involved is while
not a bad thing in such a process, must be motivated
from the outset.
 Where „experts‟ become outsider facilitators, and
stakeholders become „experts‟ there will be problems
in maintaining expectations of high technical merit.

8. What to monitor
 Streamlining: a wide range of governance issues
to contend with. Result: CSO process outlined
governance themes.
 The appropriateness of the NPOA as a measuring
yardstick: Ideally, NPOA but…
 Vagueness of NPOA Indicators
 M&E Framework: expectations for PM&E in terms of
conventional M&E frameworks difficult to actualise
 Methodology: Data gathering and analysis:
triangulation of sources albeit generalized and
arbitrary.
 Validation/rating

9. What to monitor
 Lessons:
 What to monitor will always be a critical issue in a PM&E
process. While the decision to not deal with indicators
was a collective one and it made the AMP process a lot
more manageable as an M&E project, it presented
considerable methodological concerns especially in the
terms of the validity of results and the ratings.
 Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation is prone to
anecdotal evidence as against methodological data
gathering.
 However if seen as transformative PM&E, what the AMP
process lacks in technical merit, it delivers in full dose as
a strong advocacy instrument for reform. Perhaps in this
regard, conventional M&E practice may fall short.

10. Negotiation and weighting of
interests
 Four features that are associated with good PM&E
practice: participation, learning, negotiation and
flexibility
 Implies the dynamics of group behavior, which
from the group theory standpoint diagnoses the
potential struggle between groups and individuals.
 Alexander George (Designing public policy)
“some kind of bargaining process is likely to
operate within the group even if members are
unaware of it”
 a major variable affecting group bargaining
processes is the attitude and behaviour of the
authority convening this group.

11. Negotiation contd
 Lessons:The convener/expert facilitates.
Facilitation involves establishing clear
objectives for the project, mediation and
an ability to negotiate terms and
conditions among stakeholders in such a
way as to maintain the essence the
project objectives.

12. conclusion
 Certain schools in PM&E essentially see
participation as validating and legitimizing a M&E
process. This is debatable. If that is so, like the AMP,
can the relative success of guaranteeing some
level of participation at every stage of its process
produce a reliable report that can be used to
benefit decision making in governance?
 the lessons above show us that there is a weakness
in the capacity of CSOs to undertake such M&E
processes especially in terms of negotiating
measuring instruments and indicators and in
ensuring technical cleanness in the process

13. For full article
go to:
http://www.sabinet.co.za/ab
stracts/afrins/afrins_v41_n4_a
3.html
Africa Insight 9vol 41) Issue 1