The Fund is focused on high impact, high quality programmes that deliver value for money for the UK taxpayer. MREL has been developed to allow us to deliver feedback on progress towards these goals.
The OECD DAC principles for Evaluation of Development Assistance shows the importance of good quality monitoring and evaluation for aid development programmes globally; “aid evaluation plays an essential role in the efforts to enhance the quality of development cooperation”.
The MREL is a proportion of overall Fund allocations. HM Treasury set this at 5% of the Prosperity Fund budget.
In order to measure that impact the PF has put in place a dedicated Monitoring, Reporting, Evaluation and Learning (MREL) strategy. It will provide support to programmes as they evaluate and monitor their activities and measure how the Fund impacts on its primary objective of economic development in partner countries and the secondary objective to create opportunities for international business including UK companies. A key feature of this framework is a dedicated strand of work on cross-Fund learning to ensure that programme and portfolio managers are supported in assessing what is working and why.
To provide the right level of support and services needed at portfolio and programme level, the Prosperity Fund awarded two contracts one covering monitoring and reporting and the other to assess and deliver an independent evaluation and learning process.