Instructions and information about the seminar

Course literature used before and during the seminar: Uitto, Juha (2021). Evaluating environment in international development. Routledge (available as pdf under "files")

Virtually all major projects are evaluated after they are completed. In a way, evaluations therefore constitute their own "genre" in the projectified society.

In this seminar, we will do a close reading of a mid-term evaluation that was done in 2020 of the Sida-financed aid project "The Power Africa Project". The project aims to create the conditions for electrification in Africa with clean energy and the evaluation was done by the consulting firm Nordic Consulting Group A/S on behalf of Sida, available here .

The evaluation text is quite long (151 pages), but it is not necessary to read it in its entirety, word for word. The purpose of the seminar is instead to gain an understanding of how an evaluation is structured, how to read it, who it is written for and what you can get out of it. Together we learn to interpret the evaluation text.

To begin tackling the text, one can follow this approach:

First read the "Executive summary" (pp. viii ff), which is a short summary of the project and the evaluation
Then read the evaluation's "Terms of reference" (p. 87ff), which are the instructions Sida gave the evaluators
Then continue to study the table of contents (pp. ii–iii) to get an idea of the structure and content of the evaluation

Already now, you should have a pretty good idea of what the document in front of you actually is and what it says.

The task before, during and after the seminar is to analyze the type, content and quality of the evaluation using the categorizations and analysis tools presented in part 1 in Evaluating the environment in international development edited by Juha Uitto (2021).

Before the seminar, outline an individual brief answer to the following questions. Upload it to the canvas page.

Questions

To understand an evaluation, five questions are particularly helpful to keep in mind: why, what, who, how, and result? Start from the five questions to analyze (i) the project that the evaluation describes and (ii) the evaluation itself.
In Uitto's edited volume, the authors address different evaluation models. Which model(s) are expressed in "The Power Africa Project" evaluation?
Projects are often evaluated in terms of "relevance", "efficiency", "effectiveness", "impact", and "sustainability". How are the concepts used to organize the evaluation and what do the evaluators arrive at?
How well is the evaluation carried out? Define and discuss in terms of validity, reliability, accountability and ethics

During the seminar, we will discuss in these questions in groups and formulate a joint answer. Each group should upload their answer to the canvas page. Remember to include all group members' names .

Read more and follow the instructions for what to do before, during and after the seminar.