By Kodjo
Adams, GNA
Accra, Oct. 23, GNA – Dr Charles Amoateng, the
Head of Centre for Learning on Evaluation and Results, West Africa, has said
the Centre is developing an academic curriculum for monitoring and evaluation
in universities in Africa.
Dr Amoateng said the Centre was working with
stakeholders in Africa universities to standardise monitoring and evaluation of
curriculum for the graduate and post graduate level.
He said this in Accra at the opening of a
five-day training programme to build the capacity of 70 directors of policy
planning, monitoring and evaluation unit of all the Ministries in the country.
The programme was organised by the Ghana
Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) in collaboration with
the Ministry of Monitoring and Evaluation.
He said the development of the curriculum is
important because different universities all over Africa are doing monitoring
and evaluation, but the content has not been standardised.
Dr Amoateng said there is the need to
professionalise the curriculum, saying “we want to get to a point that
student who come to GIMPA can spend one year in studying monitoring and
evaluation and continue the rest of the year in Ivory Coast or Tanzania because
of the same curriculum”.
“We have about 50 professors all over
Africa to brainstorm on what exactly should go into an African wide monitoring
and evaluation curriculum, especially at the masters’ level”.
He said the Professors, who in 2017 started
work on the documents, will use the week to discuss the draft report and
fine-tune it before it to be sent to the various countries for validation to
become a standard curriculum for the universities who have agreed to the
standardisation process.
He said since 2017, the Centre has been
working with the Ministry of Monitoring and Evaluation to build capacity of
practitioners in the public sector.
Dr Amoateng said the practitioners would be
trained to understand basic concepts around how to monitor and evaluate
government flagship programmes and policies.
“We are working with the Ministries to
develop a policy that will be used for monitoring and evaluation within the
public sector “he said.
He said the training would help all the
Ministries to improve on their results framework so that Ministers and
leadership within the public sector would know how to use evidence-based
results in decision making.
“We have realised that quite often,
policy decisions are made by impulse but we wants government to be able to
reflect on what is working and not working and take decisions on which
programmes to scale up, change and decide on ways to improve on lives of the
people.”
He said sound and monitoring evaluation in the
public sector system is needed for sustained development.
Professor Philip Duku Osei, the Deputy Rector
of GIMPA, said monitoring and evaluation are crucial activities for effective
management.
He said good programmes are those that tend to
have a great deal of impact on the lives of the people adding that public
sector actors must ensure that they have the people in mind in all their
programmes.
He said the public services needed a strong
and coherent monitoring and evaluation framework that would promote learning
and performance measurement.
Professor Osei urged the participants to
impart the knowledge acquired in their field of work to ensure service delivery
in the public sector because good monitoring and evaluation system was the
basis for successful planning and budgeting.
GNA