Monitoring demand-driven research: the Philippines and Ghana partnership programmes

Monitoring for the demand-driven research partnership programmes is on.

It was in the late 1990s that the Netherlands Development Assistance Research Council (RAWOO) took the initiative to help design and establish two novel North-South collaborative research partnerships: a biodiversity research programme in the Philippines (BRP) and a health research programme in Ghana (HRP). The initiative was guided by the following key principles: (1) developing country 'ownership' of the programme-design process; (2) greater responsiveness of research to real-life problems and development needs; (3) broad involvement of stakeholders in agenda formation and priority-setting; (4) capacity building and institutional strengthening; and (5) genuine partnership and collaboration on equal footing.

In 2002, RAWOO proposed to launch a joint project aimed at monitoring and evaluating the implementation of both programmes, and to develop the methods, tools and indicators for assessing the programme performance, termed as the "Joint Monitoring and Evaluation (JM&E) of Research Partnerships Project". This took off at the end of 2003. Two local M&E facilitators were commissioned for the project, Dr. Levita A. Duhaylungsod, Professor at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, and Dr. Rudith King, Senior Research Fellow at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana to devise and test the tools and indicators for monitoring and evaluating the programme through a participatory approach involving the relevant stakeholders in the design process.

As BRP and HRP are approaching the end of programme implementation, a workshop on implementing the demand-driven research: the Ghana and the Philippines partnership programmes was conducted on 14 June 2004 in Hague, The Netherlands to review experiences with the implementation of both programmes among their major actors. The workshop was participated in by representatives from the Netherlands Ministry for Development Cooperation (DGIS) and Royal Netherlands Embassy in Accra, RAWOO Board members, Joint Programme Committee (JPC) members of the BRP and HRP, and staff of the BRP National Support Secretariat (NSS) and Support and Liaison Office (SLO). This activity was facilitated by Dr. Duhaylungsod and Dr. King.

Dr. Duhaylungsod presented the development of the Participatory Programme Monitoring System (PPMS) for the BRP, and the lessons learned and insights gathered through the process. She also mentioned the three major outputs of the PPMS Project: (1) PPMS framework, which explains the hierarchical logic of the monitoring system wherein the BRP's vision, mission, and goals are translated into parameters and process indicators; (2) PPMS instrument, a research programme-dedicated monitoring tool on process; and (3) PPMS User's Handbook, a complete documentation on the PPMS which expounds the process in which the PPMS was developed, as well as the procedure in using the PPMS instrument.

Dr. Rudith King presented the interim results of the JM&E project for HRP, specifically the achievements, and the concerns and challenges in undertaking the Programme Monitoring and Evaluation (PM&E).

The interim results of the JM&E project served as inputs to the discussion on the main achievements of the programmes, main constraints in programme implementation, and emerging issues such as knowledge generation, dissemination, and utilization, capacity enhancement efforts, stakeholder involvement, North-South collaboration and partnership, and programme governance and management.

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