The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a development tool, with a detailed follow-up and review mechanism, guided by a global indicator framework and prominently positioned in Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs). Within this context, however, program evaluation only plays a minor role. This policy brief analyses the position of program evaluation in public policy, development planning and VNR development processes of eight countries in Africa and Latin America.
The brief is based on a discussion paper produced jointly by the German Institute for Development Evaluation (DEval), the Centre for Learning on Evaluation and Results-Anglophone Africa (CLEAR-AA) and the Centre for Learning on Evaluation and Results-Latin America and the Caribbean (CLEAR-LAC) in 2022.
This paper found that program evaluation is marginalized in VNR development, a key international tool for assessing UN member nations’ progress in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Through document analysis and key informant interviews in the sampled countries, the paper finds that the marginal position of program evaluation vis-à-vis VNR development is linked to a combination of structural and operational issues. These include lack of internalization and entrenchment of the SDGs in public policy and planning cycles and/or processes of governments; lack of focus on the VNR process by evaluation stakeholders; the VNR development guidelines’ quantitative bias; and emerging evaluation practice in certain countries.
This brief concludes by recommending five remedial policies for addressing the marginalized position of evaluation in VNRs.