Mid-Term Review of The Rights Based Approach Strategy 2004 - 2007

Background

The Country Programme (CP) Strategy 2004 - 2007 was born out of the experiences of the most turbulent post independence era in the history of Zimbabwe. Mid- term review is a consequence of the need to continuously monitor the relevance and effectiveness of the country programme given the challenging and changing socio-economic and political environment.

Purpose/objective

Look at the implementation of the country strategy and analyse the success of the partnership midway in the strategy period of 2004 - 2007, assessing relevance of the thematic focus to the Zimbabwe context and the needs of the target group; effectiveness of the structure of the CP partnerships and the methods of engagement in such partnerships; sustainability of the CP in terms of its structure, the individual partnerships and the results achieved by the partnerships; provide conclusions and recommendations on performance of CP.

Methodology

1) desk review of available literature 2) participatory method, including inception workshop for NPA partners to share lessons learnt, major achievements in the period and focal issues that the evaluation should look at 3) field survey and validation of achievements stated in the partners' reports to NPA and the inception workshop 4) Interviews with partners, staff, target group and beneficiaries, key staff at HO, Norwegian Embassy, other International organisations 5) collection of supplementary data 5) debrief, sharing of report and findings, including workshop with partners.

Key findings

The shift to a right based approach (RBA) and the country programme, including cross cutting issues highly relevant to the environment in Zimbabwe. Capacity of partners is a key input into the implementation of RBA and NPA has focused on the appropriate priority of capacity strengthening. Sustainability of partners' capacity is threatened by high staff turnover where 50% could have left the partners by the end of the strategy period at the current levels of staff turnover.
Sustainability is anchored on strong community organisation and management structures where the partnership involved service delivery as the core, while for change agents, there is greater sustainability because the major cause of behaviour change is communication and internalisation of specific knowledge and skills and values.
Major gaps in the management systems and organizational structures at the NPA Country Programme Office (and indirectly its relationship with the regional office) which affect internal efficiency and effectiveness of programme implementation.

Recommendations

The thematic areas and cross-cutting themes will continue to be viable, but NPA could benefit from planning for different scenarios (better, status quo or worse - political/economic unrest);
The cross-cutting issues need to be identified with activities, outputs and indicators to measure achievement;
Maintain the balance between change agents partners and (rights-based) service delivery institutions because of the pressure to address some immediate needs of communities.
Explore synergies for follow-up in field by cooperating with other organisations due to the geographical spread-out, constraints on access to fuel and transportation and human resources capacity for reaching the most remote areas;
Strengthen the operationalisation of the strategic partnerships to augment the limited capacity at the country programme. Methods of engagement such as workshops and conferences are recommended to be continued because it's more cost-efficient;.
To counter signs of stagnation in the portfolio structure, NPA should develop clear partnership cycles, including exit strategies;
Greater transparency at organisation and management level is needed, especially sharing of management letters from partners' external auditors. NPA also encouraged to increase transparency towards partners, i.e. the criteria for partner selection and resource allocations;
Strengthening financial management capacity of partners in the area of financial reporting, general accounting concepts and foreign exchange management;
Encourage NPA partners to start conducting public audits of accounts and budgets with the local communities to promote stronger ownership and transparency of projects among constituencies and target group;
RBA conceptualisation needs to penetrate to partners' project officer and field staff, beyond the directors and the senior programme managers which have benefited from NPA's training so far.
Enhance evidence-based networking and advocacy. Partners need to be trained in using experiences and case studies from the partner level activities as the basis for evidence based advocacy at national policy level;
Lack of leadership of the CPO needs to be addressed immediately by either employing a CP manager or clarify roles and responsibilities among the existing management team for better team work and more effective interface with the RO and HO;
Make a system for absorbing 'best practices'.

Comments from the organisation

Findings and recommendations will provide input to the formulation of the new strategy and to guide the programming for the next period. The regional office will address the management issues and a new organisational structure will be in place and effective early 2007.