Sahel Resilience Learning (SAREL): Final Performance Evaluation

Following repeated large-scale humanitarian emergencies in the Sahel, USAID recognised that continuing to treat these recurrent crises as acute emergencies is extremely costly and does not effectively address their underlying causes. In response, USAID’s Resilience in the Sahel Enhanced (RISE) initiative realigned existing and new humanitarian and development assistance efforts to strengthen resilience in agro-pastoral and marginal agriculture livelihood zones of the Sahel.

USAID/Senegal’s Sahel Regional Office (SRO) implemented the Sahel Resilience Learning Project (SAREL) to provide monitoring, evaluation, collaboration and learning support to the RISE initiative. SAREL worked to strengthen the capacity of key stakeholders to engage in adaptive, evidence-based learning in order to promote the adoption of methods and innovations that best enhance resilience in the region. 

This report presents findings, conclusions and recommendations of SAREL’s final performance evaluation. SRO commissioned the USAID/Senegal Monitoring and Evaluation Project (USAID/Senegal MEP) to design and implement this evaluation. The SRO requested this final performance evaluation to complement the larger Resilience in Sahel Enhanced (RISE) final evaluation and to provide more activity-specific information that can be used by USAID for adaptive management in the design of future learning activities for resilience programming.