AGRA Institutional Evaluation 2016

Final Report

The evaluation’s key findings link to the major elements of its strategic framework, Management and Organization, Program Effectiveness, Governance, and Monitoring and Evaluation. Key findings included 1) the lack of clarity surrounding AGRA’s core value proposition and business model, 2) ambiguity over AGRA’s identity, including its perception as an African institution, 3) concerns that AGRA’s alignment with national government priorities and CAADP process engagement are less than optimal, though with much goodwill and appreciation for AGRA’s role as an honest broker and for its political neutrality, 4) a general view by partners and external stakeholders’ confidence in the then new leadership with an acknowledgement that it is making positive changes to yield a more effective operating model, 5) AGRA’s individual program streams has produced impressive intermediate results, in particular, the quality of its technical assistance and capacity building termed as excellent and distinguished from other grant makers, 6) the transformational objective of AGRA remains aspirational and the results to date indicate that AGRA will need more than the next five years to achieve this goal, 7) AGRA’s board emerges with a mix of positives including highly professional membership and good gender distribution in line with industry standards, though with reluctance to shift away from overly optimistic high-level goals, gaps in financial oversight and committee responsibility and engagement, and 8) Despite AGRA being viewed by its immediate partner universe quite positively, it has not disseminated its many successes to a wider, eager pool of interested stakeholders due to its rather poor institutional communication mechanisms.