Building capacity in participatory monitoring and evaluation in NARES

Members of the Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance were working to improve their capacity in planning and management through the introduction of participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) systems to national agricultural research and extension institutes (NARES) and their partners in Eastern and Southern Africa. The national bean programmes within NARES in six countries had been successful in institutionalising PM&E and in encouraging partners involved in the dissemination of bean technologies to incorporate PM&E systems in their projects. PM&E systems provided NARES and their diverse partners with ways of: simplifying complex implementation plans, dealing with multiple agendas, and assessing long term impacts. It introduced a learning culture into the organisation and provided a means of assessing the progress of programmes against regionally and nationally-defined milestones, generating useful information for evaluation in the process.