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

20An important factor for impact also concerns the nature of networks andpartnerships formed by the Centre. Some of these issues will be followed up as theyemerge from the survey and the organisational level. Interviews were importanthowever, especially as previous evaluations had not interviewed the regional advisoryboard members. The networks for academic sustainability and quality wereconsulted. These included some of the 5 collaborating partners who either haveMoUs or partnership roles and also members of their regional colloquia. In additionkey supporting institutions include Women’s Law at University of Oslo were alsointerviewed. Indeed the evaluators incorporated some visits as regional stop-overs inorder to seek better coverage of the Centre’s collaboration. But we also asked aboutnetworks for more policy and legal ends. For example, in the two country cases weattempted to speak with influential entities, such as the Law Commissions, and whereappropriate Parliamentary Committees (dealing with Women’s issues, for example)and also civil society actors to gauge the policy and legal ‘reach’ of Centre networks.Perceptions of the Centre in relation to the key actors or networks at national level(especially in Zimbabwe) but also regionally, in terms of regional women’s rights andlegal standards were raised.5) Strengths and Weakness- Opportunities and Threats exercise: this was conducted in theparticipatory spirit of the Master course, with all relevant Centre staff. The objectivewas to prompt discussion as to the achievements and also any shortcomings etc. inthe Centre’s approach according to the Centre itself. It is a valuable technique ingetting a lot of information quickly, and in a manner which enables expression of theevaluated entity’s collective response and insights.6) Country case studies- the ToR asked for two countries to be visited. A number ofcountries send out students but only two were to be chosen. One had to beZimbabwe itself, as it is the location of the Centre and with the clear majority ofgraduates. The other was discussed with Norad and with the Centre. There were anumber of considerations taken into account. An important factor was whichcountry could show a degree of institutional impact. Though Zambia had beencovered in a previous evaluation, the evaluators considered that its selection for thepresent evaluation would demonstrate some continuity with the previous reviews.Furthermore, through the presence of a large number of Zambian police over theyears on the course, there is also real potential to show impact in a specific sector. Inaddition to these two cases, because Nairobi was a brief stop-over to interview theregional advisory board chairwomen, the opportunity was taken also to speak withsome Kenyan graduates. Although not requested by the ToR, it did present awindow on a group of graduates not previously included in an evaluation. In anycase, the representativeness of the survey does, we believe, cover all sendingcountries.Some limitations include that the study was limited to two country case studies, albeitwith some limited findings added from a third. In general, responses of graduates areoverwhelmingly but not exclusively of female graduates (especially in Zimbabwe).Furthermore, because identifying graduate influence and impact was a key priority,perhaps the study did not address those students who have not had any impact andwhy this may be so. Though the Evaluation Team believes that the survey provides agood vehicle to mitigate these issues, those students not demonstrating impact mightbe heavily reflected by the 52 per cent who did not respond. Nonetheless, drawing