The 3rd Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the African Parliamentarians' Network on Development Evaluation (APNODE), held in Khartoum, Sudan, from July 15th to 17th, attracted 47 participants from 17 countries.
Among these were three Speakers of Parliament (from Sudan, Ethiopia and Uganda), emphasizing the support that the network enjoys at the highest levels. Development partners including UN Women, the Centre for Learning on Evaluation and Results for Anglophone Africa (CLEAR-AA), and Independent Development Evaluation of the AfDB also participated.
APNODE has made headway in its advocacy for the use of factual, evidence-based evaluations as a means of improving the results of development policies and projects, particularly in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, and enhancing accountability towards citizens.
Opening the meeting, the Chairperson of APNODE, Senator Roger Mbassa Ndine, invited new members to embrace the mission, vision and objectives that APNODE has forged over the last 3 years. He stressed that members of the network should leverage their combined resources to promote evaluation as a means of achieving development effectiveness and inclusive growth at national, regional and at continental levels. Individually, as well as collectively, parliamentarians have a key role to play in the use of evaluation to spur credibility.
The agenda of the APNODE AGM included presentations of activities undertaken by members of the network during the year to promote the use of evaluation in overseeing development spending and results in their countries and regions. New national chapters of APNODE were formed in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Tanzania during the past year. These will benefit from the support of the network to engage in evaluation processes in their respective countries. The success stories of parliamentarians in their bid to advocate for evaluation provided the backdrop for the discussion and adoption of the APNODE Strategic Plan 2017-2020.
The third AGM also discussed and approved amendments to the APNODE Constitution which clarified issues on the role of parliamentarians, as individual members, as opposed to that of parliaments as institutions, in the network. The issue of mobilizing resources for the network to enable it to implement its Strategic Plan was also discussed.
A new Executive Committee of APNODE was elected to serve for the next two years (2017-2019). Sen. Roger Mbassa Ndine (Cameroon) was elected as the Chairperson, with Hon. Evelyn Mpagi-Kaabule (Uganda) as Vice-Chairperson. The Treasurer is Hon. Raphael Chegeni (Tanzania). Hon. Assou Jean-Marie Apezouke (Togo) stands as Member from the previous Executive Committee. Other elected members are Hon. Jérémie Adomahou (Benin), Hon. Imbassou Ouattara Abbas (Côte d'Ivoire), Sen. André Richard Moussounda Mikala (Gabon), Hon. Arnaud Tody (Madagascar), Hon. Dr. Abdeen Shareef (Sudan), and Hon. David Chapfika (Zimbabwe). Representatives from partner organizations are the Independent Development Evaluation of the African Development Bank (IDEV/AfDB), the Centre for Learning on Evaluation and Results Anglophone Africa (CLEAR-AA), and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women).
