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The Climate-Eval CoP hosted by the Global Environment Facility Independent Evaluation Office (GEF IEO) has honored a budding African evaluator, Mrs Diop Fatou Ndeye, founding member and Treasurer of l’Association Sénégalaise d’Evaluation (SenEval) and since 2009 member of AfCoP, a Community of Practice of over 1,000 practitioners managing for development results (MfDR) from 37 different African countries for her work in climate change evaluation.
Diop edged 13 colleagues mostly from Africa and Asia to the award designed to recognize excellence in environmental evaluation in general and climate change evaluation to be specific. She was also a participant in the environment and climate change strand of the African Evaluation Association (AfrEA) conference whcih took place in Yaounde from March 3-7, 2014.
The Senegalese-born evaluator who also doubles as an Economist with special focus on project design evaluated the Senegalese portion of the Great Green Wall project funded in part by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to prevent the advancement of the Sahara Desert southwards and reduce environmental stress along the Sahalien Belt of Africa spanning Senegal in the West Coast to Djibouti in the East Coast of Africa. The project is more than 7,000 kilometers long and about 15 meters wide. It was initiated in 2005 by Presidents of the region. Algeria, Cameroon and Benin recently joined the initaitive.
With respect to the evaluation proper, Mrs Diop told Climate-Eval that they (evaluators) set out in 2011 to evaluate the impact of the project on local populations and found out that the project had resulted to income generating activities for locals in the communities covered by the project in Senegal. However, they (evaluators) found out that local ownership was lacking. So, they recommended improved communication to better explain the objectives of the project as well as tighten and clearly define objectives of the project including clearer specifications of each actor’s role.
To honor her work, Mrs Diop shall receive an air ticket, accommodation and perdiem to attend the 2nd International Conference on Evaluating Climate Change and Development scheduled for Washington DC in the month of September 2014. She will also get a chance to present her work at a larger global audience of evaluators during the conference.
The award was handed over to Mrs Diop at the African Evaluation Association Conference which ended in Yaoundé early March by Ms. Baljit Wadhwa, Senior Evaluator with the Country Portfolio Evaluation (CPE) Team in GEF IEO on behalf of the Community of Practice.
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