moneval_experts_2012_Impressions_Day2

= Africa RISING M&E Expert Meeting = Back to the event agenda
 * 5-7 September 2012 **
 * Large auditorium, ** ** ILRI Ethiopia, Addis Ababa **

Impressions of day 2
**Commentary of the day (Jerry)**: Half the people haven't been to any meeting and hardly any has gone to all the meetings.

What this program is really about: system CRPs (CRP 1.1 and 1.2). USAid wanted to develop region-specific projects to zoom in on specific sites to help those CRPs along and USAid wanted to focus AgResearch on hunger and poverty and on medium to high ag potential. Some countries were not desirable for USAid.

The target: smallholder farmers with some / sufficient land capital to improve capital. The definition of smallholders varies a lot from a country to the next. We haven't really defined this, leaving it to the project to define. In general, through these meetings we kept that in mind.

CRPs were intended to have multiple CG centers work together. That's why we work in these three megasites which were originally envisaged as separate projects but were thought later as complementary initiatives under one broad program banner. How to come up with an integrated plan across these different sites? How to mesh in with the USAid missions in this picture?

In our agric office, the partnership between CG centers and missions has been one of the most valuable outcomes of this project (together with the quick wins). So we end up with different sites etc. and we come back to this quite regularly.

It's useful to have fresh eyes and ears revisit these sites. We are getting down to crunch time and we have to rely on Peter, Irmgard, Mateete, Asamoah, Carlo etc. to come down to practical decisions.

I'll be here for the next two months and will put my weight in this.

Had we set this in stone early on, it wouldn't have looked very good. We got some inspiration from the problems of challenge programs and others - we incorporated some lessons learnt.

We are struggling with chicken-and-egg conundrums. All components have to be the chickens: get sthg out there to have people react on it. In Malawi, the concreteness of the project has helped move things along.

We do need outcomes. The outline we developed in Ibadan (the 'program document') needs to be fleshed out by the end of September. We have different writing teams at different times and need to figure out a good process to get it together.

We have a good reputation in DC. A few sites to get activities on and work around that will get us further.

We have to get started in a way that doesn't ruin the randomization process. (Joseph: We can randomize over time).