Regional Programme to Strengthen Managing for Impact (SMIP) in Eastern and Southern Africa

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Regional Programme to Strengthen Managing for
Impact (SMIP) in Eastern and Southern Africa

• ME as Learning rethinking the dominant Paradigm

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How have we done?

• Despite large amounts of aid the development
  record is very patchy (cf Asia)
• Meta-analysis of IFAD/WB projects reveals that we
  are repeating mistakes eg FTCs in Ethiopia
• Development is still heavily donor-driven
• Although there are some good examples..
• We cannot continue to do business as usual

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Current trends in development

• Need to be able to demonstrate impact - convince
  donors that worthwhile results are being achieved
• Similarly, increasing pressure for donors to
  justify investment
• This means a need to combine technical solutions
  with social and institutional change -
  Participation and empowerment
• Need for a flexible process approach to
  development where implementing partners and
  beneficiaries (primary stakeholders) learn
  together

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What is impact?

• Impact on livelihoods, policies, institutions and
  processes
• The changes in the lives of rural people, as
  perceived by them and their partners, plus
  sustainability enhancing change in their
  environment to which the project has contributed

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Barriers to impact

• Analysis of situation inadequate and driven by
  external forces
• The ways organizations operate and the
  institutional context top-down and leads to lack
  of participation and ownership
• Projects and programmes not adaptive to changing
  situations
• Catastrophes (shocks and stressors) undermine
  current situations
• Lack of proven and effective service delivery
  models at local level
• Lack of sufficient and quality human resources
• Lack of organizations working together in
  effective partnerships
• Power and vested interests influence the
  development agenda
• Non-enabling institutional framework
• Alternative conflicting development paradigms

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Purpose of ME

• Alternative paradigm for ME being outlined
  presupposes that ME system fulfils the following
  purposes
• Accountability demonstrating to donors,
  beneficiaries and implementing partners that
  expenditure, actions and results are as agreed or
  are as can reasonably be expected in a given
  situation.
• Supporting operational management - providing the
  basic management information needed to direct,
  coordinate and control the human, financial and
  physical resources required to achieve any given
  objective.
• Supporting strategic management providing the
  information for and facilitating the processes
  required to set and adjust goals, objectives and
  strategies and to improve quality and
  performance.
• Knowledge creation generating new insights that
  contribute to the established knowledge base in a
  given field.
• Empowerment building the capacity, self
  reliance and confidence of beneficiaries and
  implementing staff and partners to effectively
  guide, management and implement development
  initiatives.

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Challenges within ME

• The LFA
• The demand for accountability and impact
• Quantitative indicators only, please
• The tyranny of participation
• Lesson learning
• Everything for nothing

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The basis for an alternative ME paradigm (1)

• Increased demand for integrating learning in our
  work
• Learning organisations
• Integrating lessons learned in our work,
• Making ME more reflective and learning oriented
• Collaboration with stakeholders in
  multi-stakeholder processes important to
  facilitated (social) learning processes and
  generating and documenting lessons learned

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The basis for an alternative ME paradigm (2)

• Learning from a constructivist perspective - what
  is perceived as real is influenced by history,
  culture language value of experiential
  learning
• Learning is not just about the accumulation of
  knowledge skills but also the ability to
  constantly improve the efficacy for action
• Recognising dynamic environments and uncertainty,
  need for responsive adaptive management - the
  environments in which pro-poor initiatives
  operate is dynamic often difficult to predict
• Moving from external design and evaluation to
  internal learning
• Types and sources of information for learning and
  management is increasingly impact and results
  based

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The basis for an alternative ME paradigm (3)

• Integrating action learning into development
  initiatives which can improve efficiency and
  effectiveness
• Capacities, incentives and resources need to
  acknowledge innovation and be open to failure
• Emphasis on critical reflection

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The managing for impact approach

• a participatory management and learning
  approach, which seeks to address the needs of
  people, communities and organisations to bring
  about positive change
• at its heart lies people and organisations,
  where all involved in a development initiative
  become part of a learning alliance that seeks to
  achieve the greatest possible impact

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Principles of managing for impact (1)

• People-centred development where it is realised
  that the focus needs to be on benefits to groups
  of people, not just development of a sector
• A rigorous and shared understanding by
  stakeholders of theories of change which
  underpins the strategy of intervention
• Empowering of stakeholders at all levels
• Learning is recognised as a self-conscious
  process of reviewing and reflecting on
  experience, generating and applying knowledge in
  innovative and creative ways to improve action
• Appreciates and builds on existing strengths and
  capacities

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Principles of managing for impact (2)

• Promotes participatory development at all levels
  and ensures the inclusion of disadvantaged and
  vulnerable people
• Requires effective partnerships between
  stakeholders including civil society, public and
  private sectors
• Based on a holistic understanding of livelihoods
  and systems
• Promotes sustainable interventions (economically,
  environmentally, socially and institutionally)
• Recognition of the need for leadership and
  management which is consistent with learning and
  participatory approaches

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Managing for impact Key Components

• Guiding the strategy towards impact taking a
  strategic perspective whether an initiative is
  heading towards its goals (impacts) and reacting
  quickly to adjust the strategy or even the
  objectives in response to changed circumstances
  or failure
• Ensuring effective operations - managing the day
  to day coordination of financial, physical and
  human resources to ensure the actions and outputs
  required by the current strategy are being
  effectively and efficiently achieved.
• Creating a learning environment establishing a
  culture and set of relationships with all those
  involved in an initiative that will build trust,
  stimulate critical questioning and innovation and
  gain commitment and ownership.
• Establishing information gathering and management
  systems - ensuring that the systems are in place
  to provide the information that is needed to
  guide the strategy, ensure effective operations
  and encourage learning.

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The genesis of SMIP

• SMIP Strengthening Management for Impact
• Grew from acknowledgments within IFAD of need to
  think more creatively about how projects are
  learning
• Regional programme with implementing partners
  from South Africa, Kenya and Ethiopia.

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SMIP overall goals objectives

• Increasing impact of rural poverty reduction
  initiatives in Eastern Southern Africa
• Enhancing the capacity of key stakeholders to
  manage towards impact through
• Enhanced service delivery and application of M
  for I
• Increased availability access to innovations
  and new existing knowledge
• Advocacy aimed at ensuring that
  policy/institutional environment is supportive of
  efforts to manage for impact

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SMIPs key approaches to enhancing capacity for
managing towards impact

• Improving internal learning processes to guide
  design evaluation
• Building capacity to influence and guide the
  people processes relationships between
  commitment of different actors
• Strengthening abilities to identify and react to
  problems related to Project/Programme theories
  and/or implementation

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Current SMIP activities

• Training for service providers
• Responding to requests for support from projects/
  programmes on developing managing for impact
  approaches
• Identifying action learning sites where we can
  test and improve the approach
• Developing ERIL (electronic resource,information
  learning centre)

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Contact details

• SMIP Regional Programme Facilitator
• Mine Pabari mine.pabari_at_gmail.com
• Eastern Africa Sub-Regional Institution
• IFPRI-ISNAR Cosmos Ochieng c.ochieng_at_cgiar.org
  .or
• Haramaya University - Shimelis Wolde Hamriat
  shimelis65_at_yahoo.com
• Southern African Sub-Regional Institution
• Khanya-aicdd - Rachel Searle-Mbullu
  rachel_at_khanya-aicdd.org.