Evaluation of the Southern and Eastern Africa Regional Centre for ...

14−−−at the Centre and cooperating universities and funds for financing the regionalboard-meetings, and meetings in collegiums etc. In addition to the fundingfrom Norway, the Centre has received support from UoZ.In terms of Norwegian aid administration, the Embassy in Harare is theresponsible entity. The funding channel from Oslo has seen some shifts. First,notably during its growth as a regional programme, support to the Centre camefrom the ‘Africa regional’ budget post in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Thisshift was explained as due the political instability in Zimbabwe and thesanctions concerning bilateral funding. In more recent years, with competitionfrom other development issues, the funding was shifted to the Women’s Grant(‘Kvinnebevilgningen’) budget post which only became known to SEARCWLduring the course of the evaluation process. This source, however, is supposedto go to new, innovative projects, but because it is one of the few avenues forthe Centre to get funding, it is the principal source.In the last phase of the support to the programme, (2008-2012) thedevelopment of research capacity has been a major goal of the programme.An addendum to the contract was signed in 2012 with a further NOK13,5 mill.for another 2 year course (2013-14).1.2.2 Programme documentsA review of the relevant programme documents reveals a number of pertinent issues.One of the key developments is that since 2003 the Centre has been transformedmore explicitly as a regional centre. It is very unclear, however, from thedocumentation reviewed whether the stakeholders considered any advantages ofbeing ‘regional’ rather than a national-level Zimbabwean entity. There is very littledocumentation available on the desirability of this, other than vagueness attached toconcepts such as regional ownership and regional partnership but not thoroughlydiscussed. This omission is potentially significant given that the shift to a moreinstitutionalised regional approach has incurred increased funding and which alsohas implications for financial sustainability.Though readers are given a clear impression that the Centre is first and foremost aneducational and research-based entity, review of the documents reveals there is verylittle discussion of the programme logic. Objectives are presented as descriptivedeliverables. Again, the omission might be explained in terms of the stakeholdersbeing very familiar with the intervention’s aims and objectives, and as such it is animplicit logic. We therefore refer to the Centre’s 2002 ‘Forward Planning Seminar’document because it one of few occasions where the objectives are made moreexplicit. We mention this because it is important to identify what students are beingassumed to be equipped with and what as evaluators we are identifying in theCentre’s approach. The teaching methods are made more explicit, of course, in the2011 teaching book. But more emphasis in the programme documents would assistgreatly in explaining and identifying the transfer of skills in what is essentially acapacity building intervention.The descriptive approach extends also to the activities stated to build a collaborativeregional academic infrastructure that is intended to strengthen both the course andthe discipline. It is a circular logic that does not explore broader impact nor the end