Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) is an essential component of project cycle management.

It helps project implementers to demonstrate that donor aid/government spending on interventions is meeting certain required standards. But most importantly, that it is achieving/or has achieved the set strategic objectives of an intervention. To account for these, there has been an increasing demand for “Results-Based Management (RBM)” lately in many projects across institutions, and hence the adoption of “Results Framework” as a tool for monitoring, evaluating and communicating results.

Monitoring and evaluation is a process of data collection, storage, analysis and transforming of data into strategic information for making informed decisions for program management and improvement, policy formulation, and advocacy.

Although the RBM has largely been successful in communicating results, recent research has shown that the RBM does not provide sufficient evidence on how it incorporates stakeholder participation, learning, information sharing, organizational transparency and accountability. This has hence prompted new thinking on how to approach M&E in programmes.

Development partners/humanitarian actors are now switching to what we call “Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability & Learning (PMEAL)” as an approach to M&E, as opposed to the traditional approaches into the same.

The PMEAL is stakeholder-oriented, results-focused, encourages learning and drives accountability on the part of project implementers. This course is therefore designed to bring participants to speed with these essential elements.