Sharing Global Development Knowledge, Promoting Evaluation Capacity Building--AFDI Attends the CLEAR Global Forum 2015 and NEC 2015
From October 25-30, a delegation led by Dr. Li Kouqing, Director General of AFDI, together with evaluation specialists from Ministry of Finance of PRC and Shanghai Finance Bureau attended the CLEAR Global Forum 2015 and the 4th International Conference on National Evaluation Capacity (NEC) in Bangkok, Thailand.
The CLEAR Global Forum 2015 was facilitated by CLEAR Program CEO Ms. Monika Weber-Fahr. The objectives of the CLEAR Global Forum are to strengthen collaboration within the CLEAR community, to build on knowledge creation, and to improve management and performance. During the forum, a series of important issues were discussed, such as the Learning from Performance Review, the development of organizational evaluation capacity, and also the trending topics in the development M&E world.
Following the CLEAR Global Forum, the delegation also attended the 4th International Conference on National Evaluation Capacity (NEC): Blending Evaluation Principles with Development Practices to Change People’s Lives, which was jointly organized by the UNDP and the Royal Government of Thailand during October 28-30.
On October 29, Dr. Li Kouqing chaired a plenary session on “Establishing sound subnational M&E systems: meeting the challenges with local creativity”. At the invitation of CLEAR regional centers in Anglophone Africa, Latin America and East Asia, three experts from South Africa, Mexico and China talked about their experience and challenges faced in establishing M&E systems at the subnational level and shared three cases of developing M&E in Johannesburg, Jalisco, and Shanghai respectively.
As Dr. Li said during the session, all three cities and the countries they represent are latecomers in M&E, but they are also quick movers and have all made great progress in establishing and institutionalizing M&E systems to support evidence-based decision making both at national level and subnational level. Though we still face many challenges, given the different development context, we need to join hands and work together to come up with creative and appropriate measures and approaches to address the issue. And one effective way is to further strengthen institutional capacity building on M&E through the CLEAR community.
