From March through December 2020, the GIC Ltd evaluation team conducted the midterm review of the TAGDev project: Transforming African Agricultural Universities to Meaningfully Contribute to Africa’s Growth and Development (www.tagdev.org).
TAGDev is midway through a multiyear programme of support, from 2016 through 2024, implemented by the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM). Supported by Mastercard Foundation, TAGDev is implemented at its two early adopter universities – Egerton University in Kenya and Gulu University in Uganda. The major activities seek to transform African agricultural universities, including their curriculum, teaching modes and skills among their students, faculty researchers and graduates, so as to better respond to Africa’s agricultural development needs in science and its application to small-holder farming, agri-business, and entrepreneurial initiatives.
A team of 14 GIC Ltd evaluators and consultants conducted an extensive, mixed methods performance evaluation of TAGDev at its midpoint, with a view towards improving learning, programmatic quality, and accountability.
This blog captures reflections of some team members of the exercise.
Dr Anthony Egeru; RUFORUM Programme Manager
First and foremost, you took an institutional approach to evaluating the TAGDev project. This provided feedback to RUFORUM beyond the scope of the TAGDev as a project. Thus, it was easier for Internal Dynamics to be handled. This has really given me some breathing space because I am able to push for some changes with ease.
The methodology was quite thorough and to be honest, I had participated in the MTR myself as a consultant before but we were more focused on counting the beans. The difference with the process you had was that it provides opportunity for reflection and learning co-currently.
Team leadership and team processes, the MTR was not about catching the thief but about learning. I think because I was so much engrossed in it, perhaps I learnt a lot more and it has improved on my sixth management sense. To always be able to try to ask for that question; So what?
Infographics were great too.
I think personally is on the issue of the documents and their use; I think I provided too many documents tons of them. However, the deployment of these documents was minimal. This is an issue with the person in your team with the skills in Machine Learning to be able to process these documents to search for key issues relating to the MTR goals/objectives (relevance, efficiency, relevance etc.). This you need to give some thought to it. I feel we would have gained more information from these piles of documents that we have generated and curated overtime now.
Ravi Ram; Consultant
This MTR was a very positive experience, the TAGDev MTR explored the intersection of agricultural transformation and higher education in Africa – a very interesting set of topics. Personally, I have had prior experience in both areas, but never on the same assignment. Additionally, I enjoyed being part of a team that applied multiple methods, including standard techniques such as case stories, KIIs, FGDs and surveys, as well as less typically used approaches including Outcome Mapping & Outcome Harvesting. Additionally, the final qualitative data collection tools included some quantitative measures, which is not often seen.
Effect of Covid-19 on the assignment:
GIC Ltd organized itself early on to address the Covid-19 pandemic, with the start of each team call focused on the situation in each country where team members were working. For the entire team, we made the decision to work virtually. Being an international team, with consultants in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Germany and sometimes the USA, some level of virtual collaboration was required in any case, and Covid-19 meant that even for the Nairobi-based team members, we largely worked virtually. As I was not involved in direct data collection (interviews, FGDs, case stories, etc.), I did not have specific changes to my work. I really appreciated the extra steps that GIC Ltd and the team leader made to minimize risks to the team members and MTR respondents who participated in data collection.
GIC Ltd brag points from the assignment:
I feel that GIC Ltd stretched itself quite far, by adding additional evaluation criteria and questions, and also using a wide range of evaluation methods in the MTR. This proved productive in the end but added complications throughout the process.
For instance, this is the first time I applied the new evaluation criteria of coherence – which was a good introduction for me even though our work on exploring coherence was relatively light.
Eunice Egwuoba; Consultant
The approach for this assignment as designed by GIC Ltd was very impressive.
Firstly, there were weekly virtual meetings; planning, implementation etc throughout the period of the assignment. Every team member (technical, administration, management) from our different countries; Uganda, Kenya, Germany, Tanzania and Nigeria were connected. It was more like a personal connection and understanding with every team member. This created room for adequate knowledge and participation throughout the assignment. While in other assignments, I will only receive the reports at the end of each reporting phase for layout and formatting if I was engaged in that capacity without having a full understanding and participation in the assignment and most times don’t have any kind of personal connection with my team members. Secondly, the Peer Review of technical contributions during each reporting phase from other team members was remarkable.
This helped cross learning and common understanding of the assignment by every team member. Thirdly, the strategy of using Role play (Modelling) to pilot the data collection instruments; key informant instrument guide (KII) among team members as interviewer and interviewee or respondent before going to the field was helpful and ensured mastery of the instrument by the interviewers before the actual field date collection. Lastly, there was a dedicated project secretariat of three team members that coordinated team inputs, meeting of meetings, technical contributions, interview scheduling, activity follow ups and other project needs etc.
Effect of Covid-19 on the assignment:
It was a challenging moment globally, the implementation strategy which was to travel to the locations for face to face interview was extremely changed as a result of the underlined covid-19 preventive measures of minimizing physical contact, lock downs and travel restrictions. The team settled for about 80% Virtual interview and 20% physical while adhering to all the preventive measures. However, the virtual interviews allowed some respondents some level of relaxation while granting the interview as a face to face interview would have unsettled some of the respondents.
GIC Ltd brag points from the assignment:
It was a milestone achievement that this midterm review was carried out during the pandemic at a time when the world was operating with close 95% of global activities shut down. The proposed methodology for this assignment was drastically changed, the team was able to modify the methodologies to be able to accomplish the main objectives of the midterm review. The midterm review was impressive, it recorded a tremendous response rate from most of the data sources including the survey monkey. GIC Ltd should be very proud to have been able to achieve this at such a time as this.
Cynthia Kering; Consultant
The whole Midterm Review was good since we got time to interact with beneficiaries. We also had a commitment of the team and a great Leadership from Dr Etta. Am positive that the report was great it had learning points for almost all the stakeholders
First and foremost, the approach was great especially with the methodology and design of the MTR. My most amazing part was on ROMAH which was a great tool for analysis to be able to identify which outcomes exist and those that were contributed by different stakeholders. The MTR was a point of learning for me I being a young and emerging evaluator, interacting with different stakeholders having different ideas of projects on Agriculture and on improving the curriculum was really great learning. From the case stories I did, I was able to establish networks and now am able to grow seed potatoes in my kitchen garden just from the knowledge gained from the MTR. Team leadership was great we achieved almost all that were planned to be achieved and all the team members contribution was brought on board to make the whole process as successful as possible. The Infographics and all the presentations were so great.
I think the areas on improvement would be on us as GIC Ltd reviewing all the documentations at the earlier stages to avoid a scenario where we had to revise and review the report for so long. Another lesson learnt would be for the RUFORUM to provide documentation instead of referring us to their website where some of the data and information we were in dire need of could not be found.