Moving forward together: the benefits of the Twende Mbele initiative on M&E practice in Africa

Rationale: For many countries in Africa, achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) entails a need to strengthen the effectiveness, efficiency, and impact of development projects and programmes. This calls for the integration of accountability and learning mechanisms within the government structures that are primarily responsible for designing and overseeing these interventions. This in turn, has contributed to an international drive to build national monitoring and evaluation (M&E) capacities, to emphasize national ownership and capacity to manage, produce and use monitoring and evaluations to strengthen evidence-based decision-making on public policies and expenditure. At the heart of promoting peer learning collaboration in the area of M&E is the Twende Mbele initiative, launched in 2017 as a peer learning partnership of African governments interested in using M&E to strengthen government performance and accountability to citizens.
The Twende Mbele initiative involves six core country partners (Benin, South Africa, Ghana, Uganda, Niger, and Kenya), with two regional evaluation capacity development partners (CLEAR Anglophone Africa and Independent Development Evaluation (IDEV) at the African Development Bank Group). Eight other countries actively form part of the wider learning network. These partners are learning from each other about how more effective M&E systems at all levels of government can strengthen government performance.
Objective: The session seeks to highlight experiences in adopting peer-learning collaborations to build a monitoring and evaluation culture across the public sector, in a bid to strengthen the implementation of national development priorities. It will also identify mechanisms that can improve such collaborations to advance continental and international development goals.