Putting the new aid paradigm to work: challenges for monitoring and evaluation

Over the last few years a remarkable shift has taken place in the aid instruments advocated for low-income countries, characterised by a conversion from project to more programme oriented aid and by the inclusion of 'broad-based civil society participation' as a form of new aid conditionality. PRSP constitutes a new framework for policy negotiations with the recipient government but also a new set of rules for aid implementation. As most of the PRSPs are currently in the early stages of implementation, so far scant attention has been directed to monitoring and evaluation and particularly to the implications of the PRSP 'participatory' rhetoric and 'programme-based' approach. This paper contributes to this under-exploited field of research by stocktaking and assessing different aspects of M&E systems for a selected number of SSA countries. Findings of our desk study confirm evidence from other studies that M&E is among the weaker parts of most of the PRSPs. We argue that PRSP with its focus on 'process conditionality' functions as a catalyst for change, while its basic philosophy of 'participation' and 'comprehensiveness' puts at the same time unrealistic demands on at best embryonic national M&E systems.