Monitoring & Evaluation

A dissertation submitted by Anusha Lamsal in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science (MSc) in Sustainable Tropical Forestry (SUTROFOR), Bangor University & University of Copenhagen.

ABSTRACT:

The Resilient Food Systems (RFS) programme aims to respond to chronic food insecurity and targets in fostering sustainability and resilience among smallholder farmers in 12 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. This research investigated the potential for OM methodology in the RFS project in the Karamoja subregion of Uganda and northern Nigeria. This qualitative study offered OM training sessions that trained the participants from both countries to identify project vision, mission, boundary partners, outcome challenges, progress markers, strategy maps, and organizational practices. The participants used OM methodology to track the behavioural change in the boundary partners involved in the RFS projects. Participants from both countries identified 4-5 important RFS project boundary partners that need behavioural changes and defined outcome challenges, progress markers and strategy maps for each of them. RFS Uganda identified Local Farming Communities (Smallholder farmers, women, and youth) who were also the ultimate beneficiaries, National Steering Committee, Local Government, Media, and the Implementing Partners as the most important BPs. Similarly, Smallholder farmers (women and youth), the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, ADPs of all 7 states, Private sectors, and Media were identified as the most important BPs by RFS Nigeria. This study concludes that OM methodology can be implemented to track behavioural changes in Boundary Partners involved in RFS projects. To incorporate tracking of behavioural change into the project monitoring and evaluation plan, it is important to configure and adjust OM methodology to the country’s specific contexts and phases of RFS projects. When continued in other RFS countries, it should incorporate gendered perspectives in every OM stage possible. 

The data obtained during this thesis was mainly used to write this MSc dissertation. It was also used to contribute to a project report and research paper informing Uganda, Nigeria, and other RFS countries about project scaling and policy influence using OM as a method for Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E). This research contributes to the overall SSA Food Security and Sustainability Goals of the RFS as well as one of the objectives of ICRAF to address the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2 aimed at ending poverty, achieving food security and improved nutrition and encouraging sustainable agriculture.  

In the RFS programme, each country project collected its own set of resilience indicators. At a minimum, countries had to collect socio-economic and environmental data, however, the latter was the responsibility of Conservation International, which entails Global Environmental Benefits (GEB). The data collected at the country level were divided into household data, farm agriculture data, administrative/community groups management and market information. This Desktop Review provides a closing review of country project indicators.

This Final Report from Conservation International aimed at contextualising food systems resilience in Africa, looking at the whole concept of resilience to food security in Africa, by looking at RFS country project definitions of a resilient food system. This was conducted over the RFS programme with the aim of creating a unified definition of a resilient food system, the indicators and tools used per project, and the country data collected.