Africa emergency locust and grasshopper assistance (AELGA) project

The interim evaluation covered the period 1987-1996. Although the Africa Bureau"s Disaster Response Coordination Staff (AA/AFR/DRC) followed best management practices in preparing the Scope of Work for the evaluation and in obtaining approval from the Africa Bureau and the project staff, the French-speaking individual responsible for the institutional analysis was unable to travel to Africa because of medical reasons. As a result, only two of the proposed three-person team participated in the 4-week field effort and only the team leader had a working knowledge of French. This had a detrimental impact on the outcome of the evaluation and the content of the report. Moreover, there were irreconcilable technical differences and controversies between the project"s technical staff and the evaluators and their report. The intensity of the division was so great that negotiations to develop a workable report became impossible. As a consequence, the final evaluation report contained the full, unabridged comments from the project staff as an annex. Furthermore, AA/AFR/DRC formed an independent review committee to review the draft and final reports and its 17 recommendations, only 8 of which were accepted by the evaluation committee. All in all, the report left much to be desired and did little to help AA/AFR/DRC form a basis for future project direction. The findings and conclusions of the evaluation report are not summarized in this Evaluation Summary, but responses to the eight accepted recommendations are included.