Training on Monitoring and Evaluation for Agriculture and Rural Development

Agriculture forms the backbone of many developing countries and is the main economic activity for the rural communities. Since its modest beginnings, the agricultural sector has become increasingly complex and multi-faceted. The challenge agriculture faces today is how to feed the world population in an equitable manner while protecting the environment from irreversible negative changes. Monitoring and Evaluation tools and techniques plays a key role in ensuring Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD) projects are designed, implemented as planned to aid in ending hunger and poverty.

This training on monitoring and evaluation for agriculture and rural development course equips the participants with adequate skills to develop and manage robust M&E systems for effective management of ARD projects and programs. The learner is introduced to M&E frameworks indicators, tools, and techniques for M&E for ARD.

Target Participants

The training on monitoring and evaluation for agriculture and rural development is designed for researchers, project staff, development practitioners, managers and decision makers who are responsible for project, program or organization-level M&E in Agriculture and Rural Development programs.

What you will learn

By the end of this course the participants will be able to:

• Understand monitoring and evaluation (M&E) for ARD programs.
• Design ARD projects using logical framework analysis approach.
• Define different ARD indicators.
• Track performance indicators over the life of the project
• Evaluate ARD programs against objectives and targets.
• Understand gender role in M&E in ARD programs.
• Conduct impact evaluations of ARD programs

Course Duration

Online 7 Days

Classroom-based 5Days

Course Outline

Introduction to M&E

• Definition of Monitoring and Evaluation
• Why Monitoring and Evaluation is important.
• Key principles and concepts in M&E
• M&E in project lifecycle
• Complementary roles of Monitoring and Evaluation

Agriculture and Rural Development Policy issues

• Sustainable agriculture and rural development
• Economic contribution of agriculture
• Link between agriculture and rural development
• Agriculture and food security

 M&E Frameworks in Agriculture and Rural Development

• ARD Conceptual Frameworks
• ARD Results Frameworks
• Logical Framework Analysis (LFA)
• LogFrame – Design of ARD projects using LogFrame

Agriculture and Rural Development Indicators

• Indicator metrics
• Linking indicators to results
• Indicator Matrix
• ARD indicator performance tracking
• Sector-wide indicators for Agriculture and Rural Development
• Specific indicators for Sub-sectors of Agriculture and Rural Development
• Indicators for Thematic Areas related to Agriculture and Rural Development

M&E System and M&E Planning in ARD

• Importance of an M&E Plan
• Documenting M&E System in the M&E Plan
• Components of an M&E Plan-Monitoring, Evaluation, Data management, Reporting
• Using M&E Plan to implement M&E in a Project

Data Management for M&E in Agriculture and Rural Development

• Sources of Data: Information systems, surveys, participatory poverty assessments, financial management tools
• Use of different Surveys in data collection for ARD
• Participatory methods of data collection for ARD
• Data analysis for ARD

Gender integration in M&E for Agriculture and Rural Development

• Gender integration during project activities design
• Gender indicators in ARD
• Cross cutting gender issues in ARD
• Measure of gender outcomes

Performance Evaluation of Agricultural and Rural Development programs

• Determining evaluation points from results framework
• Components of evaluations: implementation and process evaluations.
• Evaluation designs- experimental, quasi-experimental and non-experimental
• Performance evaluation process
• Evaluation questions
• Evaluation findings sharing and dissemination.

Impact Evaluations for Agriculture and Rural Development

• Introduction to impact evaluation
• Attribution in impact evaluation
• Estimation of counterfactual
• Impact evaluation methods: Double difference, Propensity score matching

M&E Results Use and Dissemination

• Use of M&E results to improve and strengthen ARD projects.
• Use of M&E Lessons learnt and Best Practices
• Organization knowledge champions
• M&E reporting

Training Approach

This training on monitoring and evaluation for agriculture and rural development is delivered by our seasoned trainers who have vast experience as expert professionals. The course is taught through a mix of practical activities, theory, group works and case studies.

Training manuals and additional reference materials are provided to the participants.

Certification
Upon successful completion of this course, participants will be issued with a certificate.

Tailor-Made Course 

We can also do this as a tailor-made course to meet organization-wide training needs. A training needs assessment will be done on the training participants to collect data on the existing skills, knowledge gaps, training expectations and tailor-made needs.