Mid-Term Review of the AGIR Programme - Sida

E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R Y
impact. However, since it is unrealistic to expect all CSO partners to manage
complex information systems, the AGIR programme could focus on setting
methodologies and standards for information collection and analysis, which in
an initial phase could be centrally managed by AGIR and eventually replicated
in organisations at a smaller scale. This could have the instrumental value
of assessing the impact of AGIR as a programme, while at the same time
could contribute to strengthening AGIR partner monitoring and evaluation
systems to become effective instruments for results-based management.
The adoption of results-based management is a key outcome of the AGIR
programme and part of its capacity development strategy; thus the programme
has to either restrict the principle of respecting partners’ existing monitoring
systems and put in place a more uniform system for the use by partner CSOs,
or drastically ramp up its capacity-strengthening processes concerned with
M&E activities.
The AGIR programme should fine-tune the reporting on impact in the thematic
areas, clarifying the results chain and revisiting the theory of change that
implicitly proposed to constantly check the extent to which those specific
achievements represent steps towards the intended change proposed by AGIR.
This should inform incremental changes in the scope and nature of interventions
that the partners make in the implementation of their strategic plans
aligning them with the programme objectives. On the basis of the above, it is
recommended that AGIR reviews the result matrix in light of new partner recruitment
and to systematise the annual planning matrix as to clearly demonstrate
how partner activities feed in to outcomes (and then adjust the result
matrix accordingly).
Many of the AGIR partners’ initiatives contribute to improving access to
rights, to eliciting more accountability and to promoting good governance.
Some of these results, however, are only immediate and will not necessarily
lay the foundation for the perpetual reproduction of a strong civil society able
to hold the government responsible. Consequently, AGIR needs to continually
identify those elements that are likely to produce impact and to reproduce
practices that will guarantee the sustainability of the results achieved.
AGIR CSOs
The AGIR intermediaries should establish a strategic plan for the graduation
of CSOs who have strengthened their capacity to a point deemed sustainable
by the programme (meaning survival without programme support). As discussed
in the review, at some point there has to be a limit to the number of
AGIR CSO partners that can be supported by the intermediaries, a limit based
on the capacity of the intermediary to directly and fully support each CSO as
envisioned within the programme planning. If the programme is to grow (either
with more donors and/or additional intermediaries) how and when CSOs
move from nursery to core status and finally, to graduate out of the pro-
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