Enablers and Barriers to the Implementation of Actionaid’s Women Rights Program: Application of Adaptive Management Approach `

Abstract

The challenges currently facing development sector is the need to reach the world’s most marginalized population with better and sustainable solutions in the face of complex development challenges. This demand for evidence-based approaches to balance the needs of the targeted beneficiaries and the goals of the funding agencies. One approach that shows considerable promise for addressing these challenges is adaptive management, which by now is broadly seen as a natural, intuitive, and potentially effective way to address decision-making in the face of uncertainties. Yet the concept of adaptive management continues to evolve, and its record of success remains limited. This research has adopted a case study approach to examine and presents some of the enablers and barriers to the application of Adaptive Management Approach. Including looking at the key elements of Adaptive Management Approach present in ActionAid’s Women Rights Program, highlighting the opportunities and challenges. From the findings, the Women Rights Program at ActionAid has adopted some of the generic cyclical Adaptive Management Approach steps that include: conceptualizing the situation including defining objectives; planning actions and monitoring; implementing actions and monitoring; analyzing data, using the results and adapting; and capturing and sharing learning. However, some of the reported barriers to greater levels of adaptive management include limited communication of its implementation and evaluation, lack of clarity on what is successful adaptive management as well as social, political, financial and technical barriers. Adaptive Management Approach requires resource decisions to be made and modified as a function of what program implementers learn about the context. Decisions should therefore be modest in scope, scientifically sound, and reversible. Additionally, implementing adaptive practices requires adoption of monitoring and evaluation processes and tools that permit learning from mistakes, to support mid-course changes, building the capacity of the program staff, addressing internal organizational systems and adequately resourcing Adaptive Programs are some of the recommendation drawn from the study.