Goal
Increase the availability of quality information to improve USAID/West Africa programming and strategic decision-making in the peace and governance sector.

Life of Program
10/2012-10/2017

Total USAID Funding
USD 7.8 million

Geographic Focus
Primarily Burkina Faso, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire and Niger; additional work with partner organizations in Benin, Ghana, Senegal and Sierra Leone

Implementing Partner
The Mitchell Group

Between 2000 and 2013, eight of 15 West African nations experienced at least one year of violent conflict. The majority of countries in the region are vulnerable to future strife because of their legacies of conflict and overall state fragility. USAID|West Africa manages a complex regional portfolio aimed at strengthening systems of non-violent conflict management in West Africa, primarily by improving regional conflict early warning and investing significantly in countering violent extremism (CVE) at the community level across the region. However, USAID efforts are challenged by the difficulty of measuring impact in this complex programming environment and the general lack of sound data and local analytical capability.

The objectives of the Evaluation and Analytical Services project are two-fold:  to provide USAID|West Africa with timely, actionable information to improve development programming, as well as to strengthen the capacity of African organizations and academics to directly undertake this work in the future. To achieve these objectives, the project undertakes evaluations of key USAID interventions, fields assessment teams to research topics of interest, provides training to local monitoring and evaluation partner organizations, and supports scholars based in the local contexts of Chad, Niger and Burkina Faso as they contribute meaningfully to the growing body of work on conflict and CVE in West Africa.

Program Highlights
• Interviewed over 7,000 beneficiaries in the fall of 2013 to collect baseline data for a quasi-experimental impact evaluation of USAID|West Africa’s Peace through Development II project across Burkina Faso, Chad and Niger.
• Evaluated USAID|West Africa’s Increasing Transparency and Accountability in the Management of Natural Resources in Niger project in May 2014.
• Evaluated USAID|West Africa’s J’aime Mon Pays project in Côte d’Ivoire in June 2014.
• Completed an assessment of the risk of violent extremism in Niger in April 2014. The assessment report details the potential external and internal drivers of violent extremism in Niger and explores implications for programming.