Joint Irish Aid and DFID’s country programme evaluation: Tanzania 2004/05 to 2009/10

The idea of this joint evaluation arose from the work of the DAC Evaluation Network in promoting joint evaluations and from the information provided in the DAC Inventory of On-going and Planned Evaluations. The inventory enabled DFID and Irish Aid to identify their separate intention of evaluating their Tanzania Country Programmes in 2009/10 and to initiate discussions on the possibility of doing it jointly. A scoping visit to Tanzania was undertaken by DFID’s Evaluation Department and Irish Aid’s Evaluation and Audit Unit in October 2009 and concluded that a joint evaluation was indeed feasible.
The joint evaluation has been a very positive experience for both organisations and a number of clear advantages arose from the joint exercise.
1. DFID and Irish Aid, rather than adopting an “economies of scale” approach to doing it
jointly, each devoted the same resources to the exercise as they would have devoted to a
single donor evaluation. Significantly increased financial resources and consultancy time
could thus be devoted to the exercise and the result can be seen in the quality and depth of
the evaluation report.
2. Undertaking the evaluation jointly enabled both DFID and Irish Aid gain insights into
sectors and issues they would not otherwise have examined in a country programme
evaluation but which are important to economic, political and social developments in
Tanzania. For example, DFID were exposed to Agriculture and Local Government Reform,
areas supported by Irish Aid. Irish Aid in turn deepened its understanding of issues around
Public Financial Management and Private Sector Development, important areas in DFID’s
country programme.
No major difficulties arose from the joint nature of the evaluation. Any glitches were easily resolved
through good communications between the two evaluation departments and a couple of quickly
arranged meetings. Delays which were experienced could just as easily have occurred in a single
donor evaluation.