The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s Pan-Africa Department operates programmes across a number of African countries, at the pan-African, regional or sub-regional levels, through a complex set of regional partners.
The department’s country footprint includes some of the world’s most fragile and poorest countries facing protracted humanitarian crises. They can be inherently risky environments, where FCDO frequently relies on remote management of partners and programmes. The delivery of an effective regional strategy requires tackling complex development problems through large numbers of disparate institutions and stakeholders, including where FCDO has no presence on the ground.
The purpose of the third party monitoring (TPM) work is to provide timely, relevant feedback on the quality of results systems, data and partner delivery that can be used by departmental staff and implementing partners to drive improvements to programme delivery and reporting, and to provide the department with a higher level of assurance in what is delivered and achieved through the portfolio. It serves both learning and accountability objectives.
As TPM partners, we provide FCDO with timely and relevant feedback on the quality of results systems, data and partner delivery. Our work supports the verification of programme monitoring across a portfolio that includes humanitarian, conflict, water, energy, climate change, trade, organised crime, and agricultural development programmes. We work closely with our pool of technical specialists and regional research agencies to ensure that the collection and interpretation of TPM data is contextually relevant, technically accurate and useable for key policy and programming decisions.
We have been able to effectively provide our monitoring services even though the global pandemic has limited opportunities for data collection in the field. We have successfully delivered a range of TPM activities across the portfolio by adapting our methodologies where necessary. Where it has been possible to conduct field studies, our network of local partners have provided us with timely local intelligence to capitalise on windows of opportunity to conduct fieldwork in a safe way.
To date, we have successfully delivered 20 third party monitoring products. In its Annual Review of June 2021, FCDO surveyed programme delivery teams on their views of the Tetra Tech’s TPM work. 93% of the teams found our findings and recommendations useful, while 70% of the teams reported that their understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of their results reporting had increased because of our monitoring work.
Location
pan-Africa
Duration
2019-2022
Client
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, UK
