The evaluation team faced a political crisis with violent demonstrations which have challenged the collection of qualitative and quantitative data.

In this context, the team proposed an innovative approach for obtaining the necessary data to produce the country report. This approach included:

•  A preliminary country visit (April 2015) enabling the team to collect a first set of data from government departments and to interview government ministers, local authorities, private sector organisations and development partners.

•  As the second filed visit was prevented by the violent demonstrations in the capital ensuing from election campaigns, the evaluators conducted a remote information gathering, using the potential of information and communication technologies (ICT) by organizing video-conferences and telephone interviews with Burundi project leaders, Bank’s Foreign office representatives, AfDB tasks managers and some representatives of direct beneficiaries and the civil society. A three-day intensive workshop was held in Abidjan in November 2015, concluded by a feed-back on preliminary lessons learnt.

•  Based on information gap identification, the team recruited a Burundian independent evaluation expert who encountered stakeholders and visited on site two operations in the domains of agriculture and water infrastructure (December 2015).

This approach contributed to a compilation of sufficient and robust data, complemented by the strong experience of the team leader, Mary van Overbeke, notably with lessons learnt from ADE recent evaluations in the country, as well as by publications of other institutions. On that basis, triangulation of the findings of these multiple sources of information produced the project results assessment reports on which the evaluation, the conclusion and recommendations of the final report are based.

To download the final report and related documents, click here.