Fifty parliamentarians from 14 African countries met July 23 and 24, 2015 in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, for the inaugural Annual General Meeting of the African Parliamentarians' Network on Development Evaluation (APNODE), established in Yaoundé, Cameroon, in March 2014. The parliamentarians from Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Somalia, Togo, Uganda and Zimbabwe; represented all five geopolitical regions of the continent.
The Meeting adopted APNODE's constitution as a network of individual parliamentarians (rather than parliaments) and other interested parties who support the use of development evaluation in public decision-making.
An Executive Committee composed of a chairperson, vice-chairperson, treasurer, and eight other members was elected for a two-year term (2015-2017). The composition of the Executive Committee strives to ensure linguistic, regional and gender distribution.
Participants approved a budget and program of activities for 2015-2016 that focuses on advocacy and networking, capacity development, outreach and resource mobilization in order to expand the Network and generate awareness on the importance of evaluation for development effectiveness.
'Evaluation is critical to the work of Parliamentarians as it enables them to hold their Governments accountable on the effectiveness of their public policies and to promote an evaluation culture at the decision making level,' emphasized Senator Roger Mbassa Ndine, Chairman of APNODE's Executive Committee.
The next Annual General Meeting of APNODE will take place in Zimbabwe in July 2016
Representatives of seven development partners participated in the first Annual General Meeting, namely the AfDB, UNDP, UNICEF, UN Women, the African Evaluation Association (AfrEA) and the Réseau Francophone de l'Évaluation (RFE). The Network also benefits from the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The meeting was hosted by AfDB at its headquarters in Abidjan. The Independent Development Evaluation (IDEV) of the Bank is currently providing the Secretariat for APNODE.
