ASSESSMENT OF THE PRACTICES AND THE CHALLENGES OF MONITORING AND EVALUATION SYSTEM OF BENEFITISSD PROJECT IN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

This study was carried-out to assess the practice and the challenges of monitoring and evaluation activities of BENEFIT-ISSD-Ethiopia. Both qualitative and quantitative data was collected with open ended questionnaires and by interviewing 32 sampled employees working, as M&E Experts, Project Managers, Deputy Managers, Communication and data analyst, Cluster Managers and other support staff by using Likert Scale and the collected data was analyzed using Microsoft Excel. The result from this research indicates that the M&E practice varies significantly across the projects of BENEFIT- ISSD, where the M&E practices are less concerned about internal program improvements and external downward accountability towards beneficiaries. The study concluded that the challenges and the key factors affecting M&E practice of the project are lack of resource/limited budget, internal M&E expertise or technical staff and inadequate or poor documentation practices, data quality management, stakeholders’ involvement, commitment and accountability, weak coordination with the other projects. It is recommended to BENEFIT-ISSD project to support the M&E system to be implemented properly should allocate enough budgets, assign qualified expertise or technical staff which will be responsible and accountable to implement properly the M&E schemes to achieve the objective of the project/program.