Abstract:
In 2015, the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit adopted the 2030
Agenda for Sustainable Development, listing the required Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs). The African Union endorsed the 2063 Agenda, the continent’s shared
strategic framework for inclusive growth and sustainable development. The public
service in Africa, as globally, is under pressure to produce and show outcomes as
a measure of government’s effectiveness in meeting these goals. Genuine change
requires critical self-reflection. Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of government
performance is essential to document and report on performance, promote learning
and improvement. M&E is a mechanism to assess and analyse pre-determined
levels of performance, and to report progress on the adoption of performance
information. The National Monitoring and Evaluation Systems (NMES) contribute
to the establishment of a continuous improvement culture in service delivery and
feed information into SDG and Agenda 2063 implementation reports. M&E is an
effective public administration tool to plan, coordinate, document and share results
effectively and timeously, as translated into ministerial/departmental, and sectional
units of project M&E systems and plans. The article argues that the capacity of
public service human resources is key in the M&E function and agenda. Ethics in
M&E processes enhance M&E systems to underpin national priorities and collect
information that feeds into M&E of global strategies such as SDGs and Agenda 2063.
