Monitoring and evaluation of decentralized development in Kenya
Abstract
The policy of District Focus £or Rural Development
(1983) assigned monitoring and evaluation activities to both
the District Development Committees and the Provincial
Monitoring and Evaluation Committees, but it did not forward
any operational definition o£ the terms. This has led to an
ambiguous relationship between the provinces and the
districts in terms o£ authority and responsibility. The
objective o£ this paper is to examine the process o£
systematizing the monitoring and evaluation o£ rural
development projects and programs in Kenya.
The basic contention is that the execution o£
monitoring and evaluation by the DDCs and the PMECs can be
made more effective if monitoring tasks are distinctly
differentiated from evaluation tasks with the former being
assigned to the districts and the latter to the provinces.
As a result of the analysis provided in this paper, two
points stand out clearly. First, monitoring is a continuous
task throughout the life of a project or program. It
involves accounting, auditing and reporting. It compares
planned outputs, targets and purpose with the real levels
achieved. It can best be performed by those responsible for
every day execution o£ project activities. Second,
evaluation is a periodic activity that uses data and
information generated from the monitoring process to address
specific implementation problems and/or to assess project
effects and impact. It can best be performed by an agency
somewhat removed from day to day operations of the project
or program.
This paper proposes an information system that requires
the districts to submit quarterly progress reports to the
provinces and the headquarters. It then requires the
provinces to generate from these quarterly reports half-
yearly project status evaluation reports for submission to
both the project management in the districts and the policy
management at the headquarters
Citation
Master of Professional Studies in International Development ,Cornell Urriversity, 1988Publisher
University of Nairobi, Faculty of the graduate school