Luxembourg's development cooperation - Annual report 2018

In 2018, Luxembourg evaluated five of the seven Indicative Cooperation Programmes (ICP) with its partner countries. This involved a final evaluation of ICP III in Nicaragua (2017-2018), and mid-term reviews of the ICPs with Cabo Verde (2018), Laos (2018-2019), Mali (2018-2019) and Niger (2018-2019). In addition, a retrospective evaluation report was carried out in El Salvador (2017-2018) following Luxembourg’s gradual exit from the country, as well as evaluations of collaboration with the private sector (LuxFlag, 2018) and evaluations of NGOs (SOS Faim, 2018; peer review of FEVE 3, 2017-2019).

JOINT MFEA-LUXDEV MID-TERM REVIEWS 

Before 2016, LuxDev was responsible for carrying out the mid-term and final reviews of the bilateral programmes it implemented on behalf of Luxembourg’s development cooperation. For its part, the Ministry carried out country mid-term reviews where the scope of investigation went beyond the individual programmes and analysed the ICP as a whole at a political and strategic level. LuxDev’s programme-based evaluations acted as a basis for the Ministry’s mid-term reviews.

Since running a pilot exercise for the first time in Senegal in 2016, Luxembourg’s development cooperation has decided to combine these technical and strategic evaluations and to carry out mid-term reviews jointly between the MFEA and LuxDev. The exercise is a holistic one, where a single team of evaluators is responsible for evaluating the ICP in its entirety, on the one hand evaluating all its components one by one and on the other hand evaluating the ICP as a whole at the strategic level.

The theory was that, in combining these two exercises, the process would become more effective and more efficient, learning would be optimised, costs reduced and the workload reduced, especially for the partners in the concerned countries. Another advantage is that the same evaluation team carried out both exercises at the same time or in two immediately consecutive phases, which creates a more homogeneous analysis. The Ministry publishes tenders for the joint mid-term reviews and manages the contract with the evaluation team but the daily management of the evaluation is shared between the Ministry and LuxDev.

The mid-term reviews, whether they are joint or not, always have a dual objective: learning and accountability. The main objective of the ICP mid-term reviews is to provide an intermediate assessment that will support and facilitate political dialogue between the two partner governments. The reflections on the orientations and content of the ICP should also stimulate, as far as possible, a dialogue with a view to preparing and identifying the next ICP. This analysis is based on the verifications and lessons drawn from the technical evaluations the aim of which is to analyse the specific results and objectives achieved during the evaluation in order to identify the lessons learned, draw conclusions and make recommendations for the next steps and for similar future projects. As part of the joint mid-term reviews, these two processes are performed consecutively by the same team. The technical evaluations are carried out in an initial phase that ends with the submission of reports for each programme evaluated. The results of this initial phase are the basis for the second phase, which focuses on the political and strategic level.

In 2018, three joint mid-term reviews were launched – in Cabo Verde, Mali and Niger. A fourth mid-term review was carried out in Laos under the “traditional” model, i.e. the Ministry carried out its own evaluation focusing on the political and strategic level. All the mid-term reviews carried out an analysis at the political and strategic level, as well as aspects specific to each review. The review in Cabo Verde covered three bilateral programmes implemented by LuxDev, as well as an evaluation of budget support. The mid-term review in Mali evaluated three bilateral programmes implemented by LuxDev, two bilateral programmes implemented by PROMAN while attempting to integrate the 3D approach and a development-humanitarian-security dimension. Finally, the mid-term review in Niger went even further with four evaluations of bilateral programmes implemented by LuxDev, one evaluation of the ILLIMIN multilateral project implemented by UNFPA and a review of Luxembourg’s humanitarian action in Niger.

The mid-term reviews will be the subject of a knowledge-retention exercise in 2019 in order to draw the essential lessons and recommendations from these evaluations and to improve the process of the mid-term reviews, whether joint or not joint, with the final aim of optimising Luxembourg’s development cooperation’s evaluations.