Monitoring and Evaluation for Agriculture and Rural Development Course

Introduction

Agriculture forms the backbone of many developing countries and is the main economic activity for the rural communities. Since its modest beginnings, the agricultural sector has become increasingly complex and multi-faceted. The challenge agriculture faces today is how to feed the world population in an equitable manner while protecting the environment from irreversible negative changes. Monitoring and Evaluation tools and techniques plays a key role in ensuring Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD) projects are designed, implemented as planned to aid in ending hunger and poverty.

This course equips the participants with adequate skills to develop and manage robust M&E systems for effective management of ARD projects and programs. The learner is introduced to M&E frameworks indicators, tools and techniques for M&E for ARD.

Who should attend

This course is designed for researchers, project staff, development practitioners, managers and decision makers who are responsible for project, program or organization-level M&E in Agriculture and Rural Development programs.

Course Duration

5 Days

Course Objective

By the end of this course the participants will be able to:

• Understand monitoring and evaluation (M&E) for ARD programs
• Design ARD projects using logical framework analysis approach
• Define different ARD indicators
• Track performance indicators over the life of the project
• Evaluate ARD programs against objectives and targets
• Understand gender role in M&E in ARD programs
• Conduct impact evaluations of ARD programs

Course Content

Introduction to M&E

• Definition of Monitoring and Evaluation
• Why Monitoring and Evaluation is important
• Key principles and concepts in M&E
• M&E in project lifecycle
• Complementary roles of Monitoring and Evaluation

Agriculture and Rural Development Policy issues

• Sustainable agriculture and rural development
• Economic contribution of agriculture
• Link between agriculture and rural development
• Agriculture and food security

 M&E Frameworks in Agriculture and Rural Development

• ARD Conceptual Frameworks
• ARD Results Frameworks
• Logical Framework Analysis (LFA)
• LogFrame - Design of ARD projects using LogFrame

Agriculture and Rural Development Indicators

• Indicator metrics
• Linking indicators to results
• Indicator Matrix
• ARD indicator performance tracking
• Sector-wide indicators for Agriculture and Rural Development
• Specific indicators for Sub-sectors of Agriculture and Rural Development
• Indicators for Thematic Areas related to Agriculture and Rural Development

M&E System and M&E Planning in ARD

• Importance of an M&E Plan
• Documenting M&E System in the M&E Plan
• Components of an M&E Plan-Monitoring, Evaluation, Data management, Reporting
• Using M&E Plan to implement M&E in a Project

Data Management for M&E in Agriculture and Rural Development

• Sources of Data: Information systems, surveys, participatory poverty assessments, financial management tools
• Use of different Surveys in data collection for ARD
•  Participatory methods of data collection for ARD
• Data analysis for ARD

Gender integration in M&E for Agriculture and Rural Development

• Gender integration during project activities design
• Gender indicators in ARD
• Cross cutting gender issues in ARD
• Measure of gender outcomes

Performance Evaluation of Agricultural and Rural Development programs

• Determining evaluation points from results framework
• Components of evaluations: implementation and process evaluations.
• Evaluation designs- experimental, quasi-experimental and non-experimental
• Performance evaluation process
• Evaluation questions
• Evaluation findings sharing and dissemination

Impact Evaluations for Agriculture and Rural Development

• Introduction to impact evaluation
• Attribution in impact evaluation
• Estimation of counterfactual
• Impact evaluation methods: Double difference, Propensity score matching

M&E Results Use and Dissemination

• Use of M&E results to improve and strengthen ARD projects
• Use of M&E Lessons learnt and Best Practices
• Organization knowledge champions
• M&E reporting

Training Approach

This course will be delivered by our skilled trainers who have vast knowledge and experience as expert professionals in the fields. The course is taught in English and through a mix of theory, practical activities, group discussion and case studies. Course manuals and additional training materials will be provided to the participants upon completion of the training.

Tailor-Made Course

This course can also be tailor-made to meet organization requirement. For further inquiries, please contact us on: Email: [email protected] Tel: +254 721 331 808 website: www.upskilldevelopment.com