Evaluation

Iram has been involved in reflections on the evaluation of development aid policies and effectiveness of aid since the 1990s. Its procedure for evaluating development projects, programmes and policies combines qualitative and quantitative analyses and involves all the actors concerned.

It is essential to evaluate development projects, programmes and policies in order to:

• determine and assess the actual effects of development actions
• learn from interventions and use these lessons to improve the quality and effectiveness of future decisions and actions
• account for public expenditure and private contributions and make them more effective
• ensure that all the actors concerned learn from the experience.

• Evaluation of development actions, at each stage of a project and at different geographic levels.
• Evaluation of public policies in the South, and development cooperation strategies and instruments.
• Retrospective evaluations to inform the sectoral or geographic strategies of national and regional contracting authorities and their technical and financial partners.
• Monitoring and evaluating project, programme and policy design and implementation.
• Contributing to the activities of French evaluation networks (réseau Impact, Société Française d’Évaluation, F3E), particularly by helping develop evaluation methodologies.
• Training on evaluation methods and tools for institutes of higher education (Montpellier SupAgro, AgroParisTech, universities in France and Africa, etc.).

Iram uses a combination of qualitative, quantitative, statistical and econometric analyses to take account of:

• the social changes associated with development interventions (studies of social, political and institutional dynamics)
• the qualitative and quantitative results of interventions
• the medium- and long-term impacts of operations.

Iram involves all stakeholders at every stage of the evaluation to ensure that the process is a proper capacity-building exercise.