Course on Monitoring and Evaluation for Social Protection Systems
The EU-SPS programme held a tailor-made training course on monitoring and evalution for social protection systems for the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Action (MGCAS), the Institute for Women, Children and Social Action (INAS) and the National Institute for Statistics (INE) in Maputo, Mozambique in February 2017. The course content was co-designed and delivered by trainers from the International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG).
The teaching materials including lecture notes and presentations of the course on “Monitoring and Evaluation for Social Protection Systems”, prepared by a team of researchers from the International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) for Mozambique’s public servants, are now available for download and use by the broader Portuguese-speaking community interested in monitoring and evaluation tools for social protection systems. You can find the materials at the end of this page.
Context
The Government of Mozambique has adopted a new National Social Protection Strategy in April 2016 (National Basic Social Security Strategy, ENSSB II). Mozambique has received substantial budget support but recently development partners have suspended their contributions. The expansion of social protection as foreseen in the new strategy is difficult also due to fiscal crisis. However, institutional development and capacity development plans are being continued.
There are resource challenges in the implementation of the new strategy. During consultations Government stakeholders requested EU-SPS support to the strengthening of the capacity of the Ministry of Gender, Child and Social Action (MGCAS) and its implementing agency, the National Institute for Social Action (INAS).
A concept of a specially tailored M&E Course in Portuguese was prepared by EU-SPS in cooperation with the local stakeholders and a call for expressions of interest was shared with potential partners. The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) was selected to design and deliver the course. The content of the course was defined and validated at the end of 2016, through a consultative process with MGCAS and INAS officials and their technical teams. The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) delivered the course in Portuguese in Maputo between 27 February and 3 March 2017. In total, 27 government staff from the MGCAS and INAS participated in the project.
Training course to support the development of monitoring and evaluation architecture for Mozambique's social protection strategy
The course was a result of a request received from Mozambique’s Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Action and the National Institute for Social Action to the EU-SPS programme. Aimed at strengthening the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) skills and knowledge of MGCAS and INAS staff, the course took place in Maputo from 27 February to 3 March 2017.
The content of the course was defined and validated at the end of 2016, through a consultative process with MGCAS and INAS officials and their technical teams. The four instructors from the IPC-IG covered the following topics:
- Principles and tools of M&E systems
- Use of administrative data from the social sector to inform M&E systems
- Use of national household surveys in the M&E of social protection programmes
- Impact evaluation methods for social protection programmes
Following the guidelines previously agreed on with Mozambique’s officials, all course content was illustrated with examples from the country’s past, on-going and future planned M&E activities:
- Poverty analysis by Mozambique’s Ministry of Finance.
- Costing and simulated poverty impacts of Mozambique’s National Strategy for Basic Social Security through simulations based on consumption and expenditure surveys.
- Independent community-based monitoring of INAS programmes.
- INAS’ evaluation of the targeting performance of public work programmes (PASP).
- Impact evaluation and targeting analysis of the Food Subsidy Programme.
The following examples from sub-Saharan Africa were also provided largely based on the Transfer Project evaluations:
- Targeting assessment of community-based targeting in Malawi, Kenya and Mozambique.
- Ghana’s LEAP quasi-experimental evaluation (using national household surveys).
- Zambia’s Social Cash Transfer experimental evaluations.
- Ethiopia’s Tigray Social Cash Transfer non-experimental evaluation.
In addition, innovative experiences of different countries worldwide on the use of single registries and/or integrated databases for M&E purposes were presented during the course:
- Brazil, Chile and Argentina
- Indonesia
- Kenya and South Africa
After the morning sessions, practical exercises were carried out using three different programmes that were listed in Mozambique’s National Basic Social Security Strategy, selected by MGCAS and INAS officials. A monitoring and evaluation plan, including activities and indicators, was discussed in broken-up groups to provide some context to the concepts and examples discussed during the theoretical sessions.
As an unexpected result, in the final day of the course, an interesting discussion among the managers of INAS’s e-INAS (the single registry of beneficiaries for its social assistance programmes) and its forthcoming M&E unit (UMA), and MGCAS’s M&E team in charge of SIMA (its monitoring and evaluation system) led to a fruitful dialogue on how to better integrate their M&E activities and functions. This discussion was largely informed by the concepts presented during the course and was facilitated and moderated by the IPC-IG team.
For more information, please visit:
International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG)
Mozambique’s National Institute for Social Action (INAS)
Course materials (available only in Portuguese):
Lecture 1: Principles and tools of M&E systems
Lecture 2: Use of administrative data from the social sector to inform M&E systems
Lecture 3: Use of national household surveys in the M&E of social protection programmes
Lecture 4: Impact evaluation methods for social protection programmes
For more information on the course, please contact Riku Elovainio at the EU-SPS Paris office.
