InterAction
1400 16th Street, NW, Suite 210
Washington, DC 20036
www.interaction.org
Carolyn M. Long January 2007
The Africa Liaison 
Program Initiative II 
(2003-2006) 
Evaluation

 
ACRONYMS 
ALP Africa Liaison Program 
ALPI Africa Liaison Program Initiative 
CCA/ONG Conseil de Concertation et d’Appui aux ONGs 
CDPP Committee on Development Policy and Practice, InterAction 
CEO Chief Executive Officer 
CONGAD Conseil des ONGS au Développement 
CPDA Christian Partners Development Agency 
CRS Catholic Relief Services 
CTO Contractor’s Technical Officer 
FAVDO Forum of African Voluntary Development Organizations 
GAPVOD Ghanaian Association of PVOs in Development 
GDA USAID Global Development Alliance 
IR Intermediate result 
MCA Millennium Challenge Account 
MCC Millennium Challenge Corporation 
NGO Non-governmental organization 
POSDEV Pan African Organization for Sustainable Development 
PVO Private voluntary organization 
SO Strategic objective 
USAID United States Agency for International Development 

 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
SUMMARY i 
Background i 
Evaluation i 
Findings ii 
Lessons Learned vii 
Recommendations vii 
Conclusion viii 
I. INTRODUCTION 1 
II. METHODOLOGY 3 
III. INITIAL EXPECTATIONS OF ALPI II 4 
IV. RELATIONSHIPS AMONG STAKEHOLDERS 4 
A. USAID MISSION 5 
B. PVOS 5 
C. NGOS 6 
V. FINDINGS 6 
A. ACHIEVING THE STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE 6 
B. COUNTRY TEAMS’ EXPECTATIONS 8 
C. MUTUAL TRUST, KNOWLEDGE, BALANCE OF POWER, AND TENSION 9 
D. SUITABILITY FOR ADDRESSING TRIPARTITE COLLABORATION 10 
E. ACHIEVING INTERMEDIATE RESULTS 14 
VI. CHALLENGES 18 
A. LIMITATIONS OF THE ALPI II DESIGN 18 
B. DELAYS AT DIFFERENT POINTS IN THE PROCESS 20 
C. LIMITED ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT 20 
D. LIMITED COMMUNICATION WITHIN AND AMONG COUNTRIES 21 
E. LIMITED FUNDING LEVELS FOR THE COUNTRY TEAMS 21 
VII. ROLE OF INTERACTION IN ALPI II 21 
VIII. LESSONS LEARNED 22 
IX. RECOMMENDATIONS 23 
A. SHORT-TERM RECOMMENDATIONS 23 
B. LONG-TERM RECOMMENDATIONS 24 
X. CONCLUSION 24 
APPENDIX 1: SCOPE OF WORK 25 
APPENDIX 2: PERSONS INTERVIEWED 29 
APPENDIX 3: DOCUMENTS REVIEWED 31 

i 
Summary 
SUMMARY 
The Africa Liaison Program Initiative (ALPI) is a tripartite effort to improve the effectiveness of 
US assistance to Africa by promoting and supporting strong partnerships among African non￾governmental organizations (NGOs), US private voluntary organizations (PVOs), and the US 
Agency for International Development (USAID) missions — three key stakeholders in the de￾velopment of Africa. To do so, ALPI has formed country teams in five countries (Ghana, Kenya, 
Mali, and Senegal, with Rwanda joining in late 2006) comprised of representatives of these 
stakeholder groups. Through ALPI, the country teams have the opportunity to come together 
to collaborate in identifying, discussing, and addressing common challenges at policy and pro￾gram levels. 
This report presents the findings of an evaluation of ALPI II, the project funded by USAID for 
the period from December 2003 to June 2007.
BACKGROUND 
Strategic Objective. The strategic objective (SO) of the Africa Liaison Program Initiative II (ALPI 
II) is to strengthen effective tripartite partnerships among US PVOs, African NGOs, and USAID. 
The three indicators for this SO are: 
1. Partners demonstrate shared ownership of ALPI process.
2. Partners implement “new partnership” guidelines.
3. Partners carry out joint action items.
Intermediate Results. For ALPI II, the three intermediate results are: 
IR 1: Exchanged information to enhance learning and collaboration. 
IR 2: Consolidate country team model in selected countries. 
IR 3: Joint action for advocacy on ALPI themes fostered. 
Expectation. The expectation of ALPI II was to have strengthened tripartite partnerships in five 
countries so that lessons learned from each experience could be combined into a tripartite 
country team approach which could be replicated in other countries. 
The intention was to create a forum, a safe space, in each of the countries to enable national 
NGOs, US PVOs and USAID to: 
1. Discuss common concerns related to their relationships and the environment in which 
they work.
2. Choose topics to work on together which would improve their ability to achieve more ef￾fective development results.
EVALUATION 
In August 2006, InterAction retained the services of an independent consultant to conduct an 
evaluation of ALPI II. The consultant, Carolyn Long, is a development specialist who worked for 
ten years at InterAction, directed the first Africa Liaison Program (ALP), and has been an inde￾pendent development consultant since 1998. Ms. Long began the evaluation at a three-day, 
ii 
Summary 
self-evaluation workshop in Accra, Ghana with four of the country teams from Ghana, Kenya, 
Mali and Senegal, and representatives from Rwanda and InterAction. Ms. Long facilitated this 
participatory workshop. Subsequently, she continued the evaluation process through inter￾views and analysis of documents, and submitted a final report in January 2007. 
Purpose. The evaluation had a two-fold purpose: 
1. Assess the extent to which the activities carried out from 2003 to the present have ad￾vanced ALPI’s strategic objective.
2. Assess the extent to which the ALPI mechanism has proven suitable to addressing tripar￾tite collaboration around the implementation of US assistance to Africa.
Objectives. The evaluation’s three objectives were to: 
1. Assess the extent to which ALPI has achieved its intermediate results (IRs).
2. Highlight lessons learned.
3. Make recommendations about mechanism(s) to further enhance and build on the achieve￾ments of the ALPI process.
Methodology. The evaluation methodology included a self-evaluation workshop for the four 
country teams in Accra, Ghana, in September 2006 (facilitated by Ms. Long); in-person inter￾views in Ghana and Senegal following the workshop; phone interviews with respondents in 
Mali, Kenya, and Washington, DC; and a review of various ALPI-related documents. 
Framework. As a framework in which to consider the evaluation’s findings, the evaluator 
briefly examined the existing state of the relationships among USAID missions, PVOs, and 
NGOs in Sub-Saharan countries. Because of the way each of these stakeholder groups behaves, 
views its own work, and relates to the other two groups, creating a truly collaborative tripartite 
partnership among the three stakeholders presents a formidable challenge. 
FINDINGS 
ALPI II made some, but not complete, progress in achieving the Strategic Objec￾tive. 
Based on all evidence reviewed, there are encouraging results in Ghana toward achievement 
of a strengthened tripartite partnership, but only limited progress in the other three countries. 
The major reason for Ghana’s progress thus far is a sense of ownership of the ALPI process on 
the part of all stakeholders on the country team. The evaluator found at least nine elements 
that were key to developing the sense of ownership in Ghana, the most important of which 
were: 
„ Commitment and sustained interest by the USAID mission director.
„ Sustained leadership by the country team’s secretariat.
„ Effective facilitation of the country team process.
„ Skillful advocacy by NGOs and PVOs vis-à-vis the government.
This sense of ownership, however, does not extend yet to the wider community of NGOs and 
PVOs. Here, as in the other three countries, stakeholder representatives on the country team 
have seldom fulfilled their obligation to report back to their constituencies regarding ALPI ac￾tivities and results and to seek input from the constituencies regarding the initiatives.
When the evaluator asked participants in the self-evaluation workshop and others during in￾terviews to assess the extent to which the strategic objective had been met, nearly two-thirds 
iii 
Summary 
responded that there has been moderate progress toward strengthened tripartite partner￾ships. The most common reasons given as to why they didn’t give a higher score were: 
„ Lack of interest and commitment on the part of US PVOs.
„ Lack of capacity of local NGOs and the NGO networks.
„ Poor selection of activities on the part of the country team.
„ Lack of interest by USAID senior management.
„ Lack of clarity as to USAID mission expectations for the process.
Such a large percentage of scores in the medium range indicates that the country teams did 
not have clear, agreed upon performance indicators since the evaluation revealed significant 
differences in progress from one country to another. Another reason for Ghana’s relatively 
modest scores may be that respondents took into account the fact that knowledge of ALPI 
activities and results was limited to active participants (country team members and particular 
committee members). Therefore, the benefits of ALPI activities, especially in terms of expected 
change in both organizational attitudes and practices, have been limited. 
The ALPI II process met participants’ expectations to some extent. 
Here again, rankings were largely in the medium range for all four countries. (The mean re￾sponse for each country fell in the medium range on a scale of 1-10.) Reasons given for these 
scores include: 
„ Disappointment at the relatively low level of collaboration in some countries due to 
lack of interest on the part of USAID missions or PVOs or both.
„ Lack of interest in activities chosen by country teams.
„ Continued lack of access to USAID direct funding to local NGOs.
„ No opportunity for building organizational capacity.
Tension among and between groups has decreased, but no clear patterns 
regarding trust, knowledge, and the balance of power among and between 
groups emerged. 
During the self-evaluation workshop, the evaluator asked respondents to indicate if mutual 
trust, knowledge, tension, and balance of power between and among the three stakeholder 
groups had increased, decreased, or remained the same as had been at the start of ALPI II. The 
one clear pattern noted in the results — and a very important one — was that all indicated that 
tension between and among the three groups had decreased. This is an important finding 
since ALPI’s original hypothesis was that the more these groups know about each other’s inter￾ests and focus, the less animosity there would be among them. Beyond this finding, there were 
no clear patterns regarding trust, knowledge or balance of power. 
Tripartite collaboration increased, but not beyond the country teams. The limited 
capacity of NGO networks hampered achievement of results. 
Findings were reported in regard to the formation of country teams, the performance of the 
secretariats chosen, action plans and activities carried out. Country teams were formed and 
have functioned in all four countries, but they vary in terms of their cohesion and effectiveness. 
As noted earlier, in some of the teams, there has been very limited interest on the part of PVOs 
and senior levels of USAID missions. While all teams reported different levels of mutual trust 
and understanding, and effective working relationships have been developed in some of the 
teams, in no instance have these positive achievements extended to the wider community of 
NGOs, PVOs and USAID missions. As regards the secretariats, the design of the ALPI II process 
iv 
Summary 
assumed that NGO networks in the countries chosen would be strong, well-functioning organi￾zations with appropriate ability to convene the over-all NGO community, facilitate meetings 
and events and communicate effectively about results. The reality is that the limited capacity 
of NGO networks in these four countries has hampered the full achievement of results. 
The development of the action plans in the four countries and then the negotiation and ap￾proval process with InterAction all were accomplished, although the process took several 
months and did not result, in all instances, in all activities chosen being of equal interest to all 
three stakeholders. The activities of interest to all three stakeholders have been those where 
most progress has been made: 
„ The development of NGO standards in Ghana.
„ Work to influence the MCA in Ghana and Senegal.
„ Beginning of an effort to coordinate efforts related to food security in Mali.
„ An effort to harmonize the tax laws for NGOs and PVOs in Kenya.
„ A workshop to promote cooperation between NGOs/PVOs and the private sector in 
Kenya.
It should be noted, however, that all of these activities are in progress and ultimate results re￾main to be determined. 
To date, the three Intermediate Results have been achieved at least partially. 
IR 1: Exchanged information to enhance learning and collaboration. InterAction’s hope for 
regular, sustained information exchange among the three stakeholder groups in ALPI coun￾tries was partly realized during ALPI II. The work undertaken by the Ghana and Senegal teams 
on the Millennium Challenge Account, together with significant substantive assistance from 
InterAction, stands out as a success of ALPI II.1 This is an example of the kind of collaboration 
that can advance development interests at both the country level and in Washington, DC. If 
more work like this had been accomplished, ALPI II would have been a resounding success. 
Four other specific instances of information sharing include workshops or meetings: 
1. In Mali on food security.
2. In Kenya on PVO/NGO/private sector collaboration.
3. The USAID Global Development Alliance in Kenya.
4. The poverty reduction strategy (PRS) in Ghana.
As they organized themselves, all country teams used documents prepared by InterAction re￾garding experiences of partnership, but the extent to which they were read or used by the 
wider stakeholder constituencies is unknown. Lastly, a regular InterAction e-newsletter which 
served as the only routine source of information sharing among the teams was discontinued in 
mid-2005. In its place, InterAction provided more targeted information in response to specific 
requests by country teams. 
IR 2: Consolidate country team model in selected countries. The ALPI II country team 
“model” was implemented on a pilot basis in all four countries and is the only such mechanism 
available for systematic consultations among representatives of the three stakeholder groups. 
Nevertheless, only in Ghana has the country team come close to consolidating itself. Most of 
the elements of ownership noted in this report need to be present in order for a country team 
to establish and sustain itself, and launch a successful country-level dialogue. As noted earlier, 
1. In Senegal, CONGAD’s work on the MCA has not yet produced concrete results, but the network is di￾rectly involved in deliberations and considered an important player by the Government of Senegal and 
the MCC. 
v 
Summary 
even in Ghana, the stakeholder representatives on the country team still need to create infor￾mation-sharing mechanisms in order to fulfill their responsibility to feed back regular informa￾tion on ALPI activities and results to the NGO/PVO and USAID community as a whole and con￾tinue to get their input to initiatives underway. This is essential in order for the ALPI process to 
be a truly successful national dialogue with the potential to lead to greater coordination and 
collaboration among the three stakeholder groups. In hindsight, because of the amount of 
time needed to establish these multi-stakeholder initiatives, the ALPI II cooperative agreement 
should have been a five-year, rather than a three-year, effort. 
IR 3: Joint action for advocacy on ALPI themes fostered. As far as can be determined from 
the proposal (modification) submitted to USAID by InterAction, ALPI themes were to be deter￾mined by each country team. No over-all themes were to be chosen ahead of time by InterAc￾tion that would then be taken up by all the country teams. Whether joint advocacy action was 
undertaken was dependent on the topics the country teams chose. Given the topics chosen 
and the actual progress made thus far on each, a limited amount of advocacy work has been 
undertaken. In Ghana and Senegal, ALPI country teams have worked to influence the develop￾ment of the MCA compact in their countries. Also in Ghana, ALPI is the framework through 
which NGOs are involved in the government’s formulation of the NGO law, and several meet￾ings between NGOs and government have taken place. (The NGO standards are being put in 
place as a self-monitoring accountability mechanism and are an important tool in NGO advo￾cacy efforts vis-à-vis the government.) In the other countries, once initiatives are more devel￾oped, advocacy work may be taken up (e.g., food security in Mali and the tax scheme in Kenya). 
Challenges Faced During the ALPI II Process 
Reasons why the countries had limited results include: 
„ Limitations of the ALPI II design.
„ Delays at different points in the process.
„ Limited organizational commitment.
„ Weak communication within and among countries.
„ Limited funding levels for the country teams.
Design. The two major limitations in the ALPI II design were: 
1. The lack of a coherent vision and clear goals which linked InterAction to the country ac￾tivities in terms of what InterAction, together with the country teams, wanted to accom￾plish.
In other words, there was no “glue” bringing the four country team efforts together with 
InterAction work to achieve major programmatic or advocacy results on particular devel￾opment topics. While a detailed multi-stakeholder process was to be created and carried 
out, the purpose for this process was vague — to develop greater collaboration among 
the stakeholders. There was no incentive for, or commitment by InterAction to serve as a 
leader in this initiative by promoting active participation of its members. ALPI was never 
seen by InterAction leadership as a strategic opportunity. Nor was there any indication of 
whether and how the four countries might work together on topics of common concern 
other than to share lessons learned. 
While it was expected that InterAction would be the catalyst to launch the country proc￾esses, ALPI’s benefit to InterAction and its members at headquarters level was absent. Had 
there been some indication as to how greater collaboration at the country level on specific 
important advocacy objectives could have been linked with InterAction and its members’ 
advocacy efforts in the US, this may have served as the incentive to engage the leadership 
vi 
Summary 
of InterAction together with its members at headquarters level. As it was, InterAction lead￾ership (in both ALPI I and II) took no interest in this work and did nothing to urge its mem￾bers to encourage their field offices to participate. ALPI staffers were never able to develop 
an effective strategy to persuade their organization’s leadership of the potential benefit to 
InterAction. 
2. The faulty assumption about African NGO network capacity to perform the role of se￾cretariat. The decision by InterAction to have an African NGO or network in the four coun￾tries designated as the secretariat without first carefully assessing their capacity was a sig￾nificant mistake and caused serious problems in the ALPI process in all four countries.
Delays. There were several significant delays during the ALPI II process, which means that ex￾pected results have not been achieved thus far in the initiative. Changes in ALPI personnel at 
InterAction, problems with the secretariats chosen in all four countries, delays in developing 
action plans, having them approved, and getting money out to the countries caused the work 
in all four countries to move slowly. 
Organizational Commitment. Particularly as regards PVOs and USAID missions, there ap￾pears to have been limited organizational commitment in many cases. As for the PVOs, this 
was largely due to a lack of interest in the topics chosen by the country team, even though
these PVO representatives had participated in the choice. Regarding USAID missions, except 
for Ghana, there was never a strong commitment made to the process by the mission direc￾tors. 
Weak Communication. Other than e-mail communication among country team members, 
regular, systematic communication from the secretariats in the four countries to their full NGO/
PVO communities was extremely poor, and in some cases, non-existent. Therefore, only the 
country teams, themselves, were well informed about ALPI activities. For its part, InterAction 
prepared a monthly e-newsletter for all country teams and others interested in ALPI but 
stopped doing this in September 2005 in favor of more targeted information sharing in re￾sponse to country team requests. This meant there was no ALPI-wide regular communication 
to keep people informed and motivated. Each country team did have a representative on the 
ALPI advisory committee that met twice a year. There, these representatives made presenta￾tions about their teams’ progress and challenges, which were then discussed by the full com￾mittee. 
Limited Funding. Many interview respondents from all four countries indicated that the finan￾cial resources available from InterAction were not sufficient to carry out the activities they had 
planned. These “incentive funds” had been intended as a catalyst to the launch of activities 
country teams viewed as particularly important. InterAction hoped that the missions and local 
NGO/PVO communities in the countries could identify other money to supplement these 
funds. Other than in-kind contributions of time and resources by NGOs, PVOs and missions, 
and the underwriting of the private sector collaboration workshop in Kenya by the Coopera￾tive Bank, no funds have been raised for ALPI activities. 
Role of InterAction in ALPI II 
The expectation was that InterAction would be a catalyst in launching the ALPI II initiative in 
the particular countries and would continue to provide information and networking assis￾tance, but that the country teams would play the major role in managing their own ALPI work. 
In addition, because InterAction held the cooperative agreement with USAID, it was responsi￾ble for monitoring progress toward achievement of the strategic objective. In reality, because 
of difficulties already discussed regarding the role of the secretariats in three of the four coun￾tries and the lack of any mentoring arrangements for these secretariats, InterAction ALPI staff 
ended up playing a bigger role in providing technical assistance, guidance and oversight of 
ALPI activities in the countries. As noted earlier, InterAction played an important role in pro￾viding information to, and linking country teams with, key representatives of the MCA, staffs of 
vii 
Summary 
the US Congress and US PVOs — with regard to the MCA and the Africa Growth and Opportu￾nity Act (AGOA) and USAID (in regard to the GDA in Kenya), both in Washington and at country 
levels. 
For the most part, interview respondents valued InterAction’s role in bringing the ALPI II proc￾ess to the country level and launching it, providing guidance on the development of action 
plans, feedback on the over-all process, financial assistance (although all country teams felt it 
was not sufficient, as noted earlier), and information and networking assistance on key initia￾tives. Interview respondents were very critical of InterAction’s failure to persuade headquarters 
staff of PVOs to encourage and support participation of their field staff in ALPI activities. 
LESSONS LEARNED 
n Creating an ALPI-type initiative in the midst of long-established hierarchical relationships 
of USAID missions, PVO field offices and NGOs is important but very difficult and must in￾clude strong enough incentives for each of the stakeholders to commit their time and re￾sources.
o A well-functioning NGO network is the ideal organization to be the secretariat for an ALPI￾type initiative.
p Effective facilitation and negotiation skills are essential in guiding the discussions and the 
decision-making process concerning shared goals and priorities in an initiative such as 
ALPI that involves a variety of stakeholders with diverse interests.
q An NGO sector initiative such as the ALPI II process requires significant time for informa￾tion sharing, organization, mobilization, and advocacy efforts to be carried out. The ALPI II 
cooperative agreement should have had a five-year rather than a three-year duration.
r Fully utilizing the ALPI framework — by linking InterAction and its outreach, access to pol￾icy makers and expertise with country-level advocacy efforts on a common topic such as 
the MCA — produced important results for Ghana and Senegal and should have done so 
for other important development topics.
RECOMMENDATIONS 
There are two sets of recommendations. During the self-evaluation workshop held in Ghana in 
September 2006, participants proposed a set of short-term recommendations — listed in 
priority order — to be implemented in the remaining six months of the USAID-funded ALPI II 
program. 2 The evaluator has proposed a second set of long-term recommendations for any 
future ALPI-type activity. 
Short-Term Recommendations 
n It is imperative to clearly define the complementary roles and responsibilities of the three 
stakeholder groups in Africa’s development.
o InterAction needs to be more pro-active in encouraging USAID/Washington and the head￾quarters leadership of PVOs to catalyze the interest of their field offices in ALPI countries.
p Country team members should work harder to deepen relationships at the country level.
q ALPI objectives require longer-term activities, beyond three years of implementation.
2. The report of the workshop, prepared by InterAction, provides additional context for these recommen￾dations. 
viii 
Summary 
r InterAction should provide more visibility to ALPI at its annual forum, i.e., the opportunity 
for a plenary session presentation on African development by ALPI participants.
s Country teams should develop activities that incorporate the interests of all three of the 
primary stakeholder groups.
Long-Term Recommendations 
n InterAction needs to re-design the ALPI initiative in such a way that it links directly to the 
new goals adopted through the coalition’s recent strategic plan and to key initiatives that 
InterAction is undertaking.
o InterAction should use its credibility and power to lobby governmental and private donors 
and PVOs to commit ample resources to strengthen local capacity in African countries, 
beginning with the national NGO networks.
p Prior to designing a new ALPI initiative, InterAction should conduct an open-ended discus￾sion with African NGOs, PVOs and USAID missions in the four ALPI countries to learn what 
the highest priorities of each are, discuss what InterAction’s highest priorities are, and how 
the country teams might be willing to agree on a common objective on which they could 
work together with InterAction to achieve.
CONCLUSION 
Although all stakeholder groups involved in this endeavor agreed on the need for a forum 
such as ALPI and noted its value in interviews, one has to question the true desire for it, given 
the results of this evaluation. It seems that all three of the stakeholders have higher priorities 
than to create and sustain such a forum. Having said that, we have seen encouraging signs in 
Ghana regarding the willingness of all stakeholders to commit themselves to work together on 
a jointly-negotiated set of activities. Had the key elements of ownership been present in the 
other three countries, it is possible that more impressive results may have been achieved. What 
remains a problem is that InterAction, although it has hosted this program for many years, has 
never defined for itself the value of this initiative to its own work. This has been a lost opportu￾nity and should be corrected in any future ALPI-type process which InterAction decides to pur￾sue. InterAction’s own primary goals for its membership must be incorporated into such a 
process — both for the good of the membership and for the larger development work in 
which we are all involved. 
1 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
I. INTRODUCTION 
The strategic objective (SO) of the Africa Liaison Program Initiative II (ALPI II) is to strengthen 
effective tripartite partnerships among US PVOs, African NGOs, and USAID. The three indica￾tors for this SO are: 
Indicator 1: Partners demonstrate shared ownership of ALPI process. 
Indicator 2: Partners implement “new partnership” guidelines. 
Indicator 3: Partners carry out joint action items. 
The three Intermediate Results are: 
IR 1: Exchanged information to enhance learning and collaboration (knowledge man￾agement). 
IR 2: Consolidate country team model in selected countries. 
IR 3: Joint action for advocacy on ALPI themes fostered. 
The expectation of ALPI II was to have strengthened tripartite partnerships in five countries so 
that what was learned from each of these experiences could be combined into a tripartite 
country team approach which could be replicated in other countries. 
ALPI II is the third iteration of a USAID-funded project to InterAction that began in 1990. The 
first phase was known as the Africa Liaison Program (ALP) that served, primarily, as a way for 
USAID’s Africa Bureau to inform, engage in dialogue with, and get input from US PVOs’ head￾quarters concerning proposed strategies and programs to be undertaken by the Bureau. ALP 
also provided funding each year to enable a delegation of African NGO network leaders to at￾tend InterAction’s Annual Forum and an additional Washington Week. The Washington Week 
served as an orientation to different important donor agencies based in Washington, DC, to 
the US Congress, and to US organizations involved in social justice work in the US. The NGO 
network leaders attended meetings with USAID and the World Bank, with staff of US congres￾sional representatives and/or senators, and visited the headquarters of US domestic social jus￾tice organizations. A different group of leaders came each year. 
As a result of an evaluation of ALP in 1999, the project was re-funded with a broader purpose 
and a slightly different name, the Africa Liaison Program Initiative (ALPI I). This project ran from 
1999 to 2003. This initiative’s strategic objective was “more effective collaboration and partner￾ship among US PVOs, African NGOs and USAID leads to sustainable development in Africa.”1 Its 
three Intermediate Results were: 
IR 1: A regular dialogue among and between our member organizations, African NGOs, and 
USAID involved in African development around development issues. 
IR 2: Best practices and organizational learning developed by our member organizations, Afri￾can NGOs and USAID documented and disseminated on a regular basis. 
IR 3: The strengthening of the relationships of these actors at the country, sub-regional, and 
regional levels, and the empowerment of African NGO networks and consortia to effectively 
represent the perspectives of the rural and urban poor in development policy-making proc￾esses.2 
1. Committee on Development Policy and Practice, InterAction. (September 17, 1999) “Africa Liaison Pro￾gram Initiative, October 1999—October 2002, Proposal to USAID”, p. 5. 
2. Ibid, p. 5. 
2 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
ALPI carried out a series of regional and sub-regional conferences in Africa for African NGOs, 
field staff of US PVOs and USAID missions on topics of major significance to all three stake￾holder groups.3 A delegation of NGO leaders continued to participate in InterAction’s Annual 
Forum and Washington Week, although under ALPI the delegation was not restricted to NGO 
network leaders and rather than bringing in a completely different group of leaders each year, 
some of the same NGO leaders came each year. (InterAction had created an Advisory Commit￾tee to oversee the initiative, and some of the African NGO leaders coming to the Forum and 
Washington Week were members of this Committee that met during this time.) Both InterAc￾tion and participating organizations prepared a variety of documentation (abstracts on issues 
circulated before sub-regional conferences, reports of sub-regional conferences, case studies 
by participating organizations about their own experiences and lessons learned, and a map￾ping exercise of development relationships in Senegal and Uganda, which was used at the 
2002 sub-regional conference). 
The evaluation of ALPI I indicated that the initiative had been “very successful in improving 
knowledge and mutual understanding among the three stakeholder groups.”4 There was less 
agreement that development relationships were strengthened as a result of the improved un￾derstanding although participants indicated that many of the qualities desired in effective de￾velopment relationships had been experienced within the ALPI events (such as greater voice 
for African NGOs and a sense of mutual trust). There was least agreement that either equity 
among the partners or influence of African NGOs had increased — except with US partners, 
which is, in itself, significant. What is noteworthy is that the “highest levels of average tripartite 
satisfaction have been with the documentation and dissemination of best practices and organ￾izational learning.”5 This finding shows the importance of tangible products in a project with 
such a heavy emphasis on process and discussion. 
While the evaluation clearly affirmed the need for a forum in which US PVOs, African NGOs and 
USAID can come together to engage with one another on topics of vital importance, it also 
noted the participants’ recommendation to continue ALPI at the national level in order “to in￾crease ownership by local actors and its impact at the country level.”6 The evaluation, together 
with additional consultations with ALPI constituencies, recommended that ALPI II be designed 
to foster development of tripartite country teams in fewer countries with the expectation of 
more concrete outcomes than under ALPI I. The evaluation also endorsed InterAction’s contin￾ued role as facilitator and manager of the overall initiative. In carrying out ALPI II, InterAction 
decided to identify an African NGO or network member of each country team to serve as the 
secretariat for the initiative to manage and facilitate the activities undertaken. In doing this, 
InterAction hoped to “not only foster ownership by the African NGOs but increase their sphere 
of influence within the country tripartite team.”7 At the time of the evaluation of ALPI II, Sep￾tember–December, four country teams were functioning in Ghana, Kenya, Mali and Senegal 
with a fifth team having just been created in Rwanda. 
To fully place ALPI II in its proper historical context, it should be noted that InterAction carried 
out an “Africa Partnership Project” between September, 1988 and September, 1990 through 
which InterAction member PVOs and African NGOs came together in three consultations in 
Africa and the US to explore and foster development partnerships between African NGOs and 
US PVOs. This was at a time when Africans, themselves, were beginning to create NGOs in large 
numbers, and the concept of partnership between “Northern” (industrialized country) NGOs or 
PVOs and Southern” (developing country) NGOs was new and not well understood. At the 
3. These topics were: relationships and capacity strengthening, mutual accountability and relational gov￾ernance. 
4. Ashman, D. (January 27, 2003). “Africa Liaison Program Initiative (ALPI) 1999-2002. Final Evaluation Re￾port”, p. 11. 
5. Ibid, p. 16. 
6. Committee on Development Policy and Practice, InterAction (September 9, 2003). Africa Liaison Pro￾gram Initiative (ALPI) Modification Proposal to USAID/AFR, p. 3. 
7. Ibid, p. 3. 
3 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
founding meeting of the Forum of African Voluntary Development Organizations (FAVDO)8 in 
1987 in Dakar, Senegal, Peter J. Davies, InterAction’s President and CEO at the time, committed 
the coalition to “greater North-South dialogue and exchange.”9 Subsequently, InterAction suc￾ceeded in getting a grant from United Support of Artists for Africa (USA for Africa) for the Africa 
Partnership Program, which had three objectives: “building trust among African and U.S. lead￾ership, program collaboration at the field level, and changing the image of the way Africa is 
portrayed.”10 The results of this project were captured in a book written jointly by the African 
and US participants and published in both French and English by InterAction. Subsequently, 
InterAction continued to promote development of partnerships between its members and 
national NGOs in developing countries. Of all who participated in this early effort at partner￾ship development, Kevin Lowther, Southern Africa Regional Director of Africare, is the only 
person – from either a US PVO or an African NGO — who has continued his involvement 
throughout all three phases of ALP, ALPI I and II. 
II. METHODOLOGY 
The Scope of Work for this evaluation states the purpose as two-fold: 
1. Assess the extent to which the activities carried out from 2003 to the present have ad￾vanced ALPI’s strategic objective.
2. Assess the extent to which the ALPI mechanism has proven suitable to addressing tripar￾tite collaboration around the implementation of US assistance to Africa.
The evaluation’s objectives are to: 
1. Assess the extent to which ALPI has achieved its intermediate results (IRs).
2. Highlight lessons learned.
3. Make recommendations about mechanism(s) to further enhance and build on the achieve￾ments of the ALPI process.
InterAction selected Carolyn Long as the evaluator. She worked ten years at InterAction, di￾rected the Africa Liaison Program, and has been an independent consultant since 1998. ALPI I 
began a year after she left InterAction. A first step in this evaluation was a three-day, self￾evaluation workshop in Accra, Ghana for the four country teams from Ghana, Kenya, Mali and 
Senegal, representatives of the new Rwanda country team, and four representatives of InterAc￾tion. Ms. Long was the facilitator of the participatory workshop. The workshop took place dur￾ing three mornings, with the afternoons devoted to panel discussions on topics of significant 
interest to the country teams: roles and development of NGO networks, relationships with the 
private sector, and NGO/PVO involvement in the development of the Millennium Challenge 
Account (MCA). A separate report of this workshop is available from InterAction. 
In addition to this workshop, the evaluator held in-person interviews with members of the 
Ghana country team while in Accra, and subsequently traveled to Dakar to interview members 
of the Senegal country team and others associated with ALPI II. Interviews with members of 
the country teams and others associated with ALPI activities in Mali and Kenya were done by 
phone. The evaluator also interviewed individuals associated with ALPI II from USAID/
Washington, headquarters staff of US PVO members of InterAction, and InterAction, itself. She 
8. FAVDO was the first Pan-African network created by and for African NGOs. 
9. Ingersoll, P and J. (1992). Toward Partnership in Africa. Leadership, Development Education, Field Pro￾grams/Vers le Partenariat en Afrique. Conduite, Education pour le developpement , implementation. New 
York: InterAction, p. 10. 
10. Ibid, p. 10. 
4 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
also reviewed a variety of ALPI documents and historical documents. All of this information has 
been reviewed and analyzed to prepare this evaluation report.
III. INITIAL EXPECTATIONS OF ALPI II 
According to InterAction’s cooperative agreement with USAID, the intention of ALPI II was to 
create a forum, a safe space, in each of the four countries which would enable national NGOs, 
US PVOs and USAID to discuss common concerns related to the relationships among these 
three stakeholders, the environment in which they work, and to choose topics to work on to￾gether which would improve their ability to achieve more effective development results. Al￾though issues of common concern had been discussed in ALPI I, the forum was at a sub￾regional level; and while follow up had been expected at the country level, most often it did 
not occur. This led some of those interviewed in this evaluation to refer to ALPI I as a “talk 
shop.” 
The ALPI II forum was to be created through country teams comprised of members drawn from 
all three stakeholder groups. Having the involvement of the particular USAID mission and PVO 
representatives was particularly important since in the previous phase of ALPI, their participa￾tion often had been poor. The hope for the country team was that it would become a space 
where each stakeholder group could bring forward the issues it most wanted to discuss to ad￾vance its own program agenda and then negotiate with the other two stakeholders which two 
or three issues served that purpose most effectively for all three of the actors. The country 
team and the over-all ALPI country process was to be managed and coordinated by a secre￾tariat that would be an African organization, anticipated to be the national NGO network in 
each country. InterAction’s role was to be that of a catalyst to launch the process and then a 
facilitator providing advice and key information as needed and available from Washington, DC. 
InterAction was also to provide modest incentive funds to enable each country team to carry 
out an action plan which it would develop and which would be approved by InterAction. The 
goal for each action plan was to include activities in which all three stakeholders had a vested 
interest in order to provide an incentive to participate and to develop ownership of the work 
carried out. 
In both the self-evaluation workshop held in Accra as well as in subsequent interviews, partici￾pants in the country teams and other respondents were asked what their expectations had 
been at the beginning of the ALPI II process. Among the most common expectations were: 
„ Increased trust among members of the tripartite partnership.
„ Increased understanding of each other’s perspectives and policy stances.
„ More cooperation and collaboration among the three stakeholder groups.
„ Enhancement of each other’s capacities.
„ Improved and equitable partnerships between PVOs and NGOs.
„ Improved and equitable tripartite partnership.
„ Improved access of local NGOs to direct funding by USAID.
„ Joint advocacy regarding development policies and programs.
IV. RELATIONSHIPS AMONG STAKEHOLDERS 
Any examination of findings in this evaluation of ALPI II must take into consideration the exist￾ing state of the relationships among USAID missions, PVOs, and NGOs in Sub-Saharan African 
countries. Given the way each of these stakeholder groups behaves and views its own work, it 
5 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
is questionable whether each has sufficient interest to create a truly collaborative tripartite 
partnership with the other two. These comments are based on interviews done for this evalua￾tion as well as 25 years of observation and analysis of the roles and inter-relationships of USAID 
missions, PVOs and NGOs in Sub-Saharan African countries by the evaluator. 
A. USAID MISSIONS 
Where USAID missions work with civil society organizations in Sub-Saharan Africa, they work 
mainly with PVOs. There is a limited amount of USAID mission money that goes to local NGOs; 
and, in such cases, these tend to be well-established and strong development NGOs or democ￾racy and governance organizations created by highly experienced individuals with former ca￾reers in either government or as international civil servants and whose organizations have sig￾nificant capacity. Some missions began funding efforts in the 1980s and 1990s to strengthen 
the capacity of local development NGOs. In recent years available funding for such capacity 
strengthening work for local NGOs has been somewhat more limited, channeled primarily 
through US PVOs and more rigorously results-oriented, but not always effectively carried out 
or monitored sufficiently. In general, capacity building efforts have focused on financial ac￾countability and technical aspects of NGO work and seldom on over-all organizational devel￾opment. At the same time, over the past several years, missions have begun to fund larger and 
larger projects because of more limited staffing levels at missions as well as in the headquar￾ters in Washington. Even strong PVOs often have been obliged to join forces with other organi￾zations to be able to qualify for funding through large contracts or cooperative agreements. 
Increasingly, USAID mission staff levels are smaller. Therefore, individual staff members have 
more and more work to do to carry out their assigned duties of oversight of program design, 
awards and implementation, and considerably less time to devote to perhaps desirable but 
lower priority issues such as improved consultation with civil society or efforts to collaborate 
more effectively with either PVOs or local NGOs. As for information sharing, in French-speaking 
countries, USAID documents are available only in English, even those focused specifically on 
NGO-related activities. 
“I have seldom met USAID folks in the field who are enthusiastic about African 
NGOs. There’s a lot of talk about building capacity but no action.” 
Interview with US PVO representative 
“When USAID started to put an emphasis on results, that’s when there began to be 
a lack of interest in capacity building and organization development of NGOs…
local capacity.” 
Interview with African NGO representative 
B. PVOS 
Many, perhaps most, of the PVOs with operations in these four countries already receive USAID 
funding and have the skills and knowledge necessary to prepare successful proposals to USAID 
missions. In general, they have little to no interest in assisting local NGOs to gain direct access 
to USAID funds. Only a very few in the whole universe of PVOs have, as a major objective, the 
strengthening of local NGO capacity. While some PVOs now have “partnerships” with local 
NGOs, these arrangements are, for the most part, not true partnerships according to the defini￾tion in the InterAction partnership assessment tool (i.e., equitable arrangements where power 
is balanced between the two organizations). They are, in reality, subgrants or subcontracts 
through which the NGOs implement projects designed and funded by the particular PVO. Nor￾mally, these agreements have limited or no funding designated for capacity building purposes, 
nor do they have administrative or overhead funds for the local NGO to use to strengthen itself 
as an organization. The NGOs serve as implementers or “labor” for the PVO. Normally, the 
6 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
NGOs have had no involvement in the design of the particular project. Even when the US PVO 
has the desire to involve the NGO in the design phase, that desire is usually thwarted by the 
limited time given by USAID to respond to requests for applications or requests for proposals. 
Many PVOs say they would like to work with local NGOs but are critical of the limited capacity 
of most. While PVOs often talk of their desire to see greater local capacity, most are busy pre￾paring proposals and carrying out programs and don’t have time or resources or encourage￾ment from their headquarters to work to strengthen local NGO or CSO capacity. Even though 
many PVOs belong to national NGO networks in African countries, there is very limited collabo￾ration between PVOs and NGOs on important development topics. 
“PVOs are seen as gatekeepers – keeping local NGOs away from USAID.” 
Interview with USAID representative 
C. NGOS 
All but a small number of local NGOs in any Sub-Saharan African country have limited capacity 
to carry out development programs. Many have a strong director and perhaps a strong deputy 
but beyond that, capacity dwindles quickly. Many NGOs are run in a hierarchical manner, and 
staffers lower than the director or deputy director are not encouraged to make decisions or to 
take initiative to solve problems. Many NGOs are struggling to find enough money to survive 
as organizations. While local NGOs work with PVOs as subgrantees or subcontractors, it is fair 
to say that their preference is to have direct funding from USAID and to work independently of 
PVOs. In Francophone countries, many NGOs think the problem of accessing USAID funds is 
primarily a matter of language, but this is not the case. In both Anglophone and Francophone 
countries, many are reluctant to acknowledge their need to strengthen their capacity and to 
take the time and make the effort to examine the ways in which they need to improve their 
operations, their organizations and their accountability mechanisms in order to be eligible for 
funding from USAID or other major donors. 
“Local NGOs want something concrete like certification with USAID. It’s a much 
easier solution than being self-reflective, which is not an easy task.” 
Interview with US PVO representative 
V. FINDINGS 
The following sections discuss the extent to which: 
„ ALPI II has achieved its strategic objective.
„ Members of country teams think their expectations have been met.
„ Members of country teams think that mutual trust, mutual understanding, balance of 
power and tension have either increased, decreased or remained the same.
„ The ALPI mechanism (creation of country teams, selection of a secretariat, preparation 
of action plans, and activities undertaken) has been carried out and the extent to 
which it is suitable to addressing tripartite collaboration regarding US assistance to 
Africa.
„ The three intermediate results have been achieved.
A. ACHIEVING THE STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE 
Based on all evidence reviewed, there are encouraging results in Ghana toward achievement 
of a strengthened tripartite partnership but only limited progress in the other three countries 
7 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
(See Table 1, p. 9). The major reason for Ghana’s progress thus far is a sense of ownership of the 
ALPI process on the part of all three stakeholders on the country team. 
The modification InterAction submitted to USAID stated that the three stakeholder groups 
would need to feel ownership of the ALPI II process in order for it to be successful. The expec￾tation was that the expansion of the roles of Africa-based stakeholders in the ALPI process 
would increase feelings of ownership, strengthen the capacity of the three stakeholders to 
hold self-sustaining dialogue, and “institutionalize a culture of shared learning and achieve￾ment that will, ultimately, result in increased effectiveness.”11 
The only country where it can be said that a sense of ownership exists on the part of all three 
stakeholders on the country team is Ghana. There were numerous elements that have been 
key in developing this sense of ownership. In the other countries some, or even many, of these 
were not present. These key elements were: 
„ Intensive discussion by the USAID/Washington CTO for ALPI II with the USAID mission 
director regarding the importance of the ALPI II process.
„ Commitment and sustained interest on the part of the USAID mission director.
„ Specific assignment by the mission director of a senior USAID mission staff person to 
the country team.
„ Sustained leadership by the Ghana country team secretariat in moving the process 
forward.
„ Effective facilitation of the country team process of choosing key topics for focus re￾sulted in a choice of topics in which all three stakeholders had a vested interest, i.e., an 
incentive to participate in the ALPI II process (development of a set of standards — an 
NGO code of conduct — and work to influence the MCA in Ghana).
„ Financial and substantive support from InterAction regarding the topics the Ghana 
country team was working on (Standards and MCA).
„ Choice of an effective committee to develop the Standards.
„ Skillful advocacy by the community of NGOs in Ghana (both NGOs and PVOs) vis-à-vis 
the Government of Ghana and the MCC in order to achieve results.
„ Excellent nomination by the Ghanaian NGO community of an individual to represent 
them on the MCC board who was selected by the MCC and is currently serving.
Even in Ghana, where this sense of ownership is present in the country team, it does not ex￾tend yet to the wider community of NGOs and PVOs. Here, as in the other three countries, 
stakeholder representatives on the country team have seldom fulfilled their obligation to re￾port back to their constituencies regarding ALPI activities and results and to seek input from 
the constituencies regarding the initiatives. As a consequence, knowledge of ALPI activities 
and a sense of engagement in them are very limited among PVOs and NGOs and, to a lesser 
extent, USAID missions. 
In the self-evaluation workshop held in Accra for the four country teams, and in subsequent 
interviews, participants were asked to assess the extent to which the strategic objective of 
strengthened effective tripartite partnerships had been met in their own country (on a scale of 
“1” to ”10,” with “1” being “not at all” and “10” being “completely”). 
Of the total of 33 respondents,12 the scores were the following: nearly two-thirds of all respon￾dents believe that there has been moderate progress toward strengthened tripartite partner￾ships. Some of the most common reasons given by respondents as to why they did not give a 
higher score were: 
11. Op cit, p. 5. 
12. Of all people interviewed, only those with direct experience in a particular country were asked this 
question. 
8 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
„ Lack of interest and commitment on the part of US PVOs.
„ Lack of capacity of local NGOs and the NGO networks.
„ Poor selection of activities on the part of the country team.
„ Lack of interest by USAID senior management.
„ Lack of clarity as to USAID mission expectations for the process.
Scores in the low range reflect experiences from two countries, and scores in the high range 
reflect experiences from all four countries. The fact that the majority of these scores are in the 
medium range indicates that the country teams did not have clear, agreed upon performance 
indicators since the evidence reviewed by the evaluator and the interviews conducted reveal 
significant differences in progress from one country to another. For example, members of the 
Ghana country team scored their work within the same medium range as other lower perform￾ing country teams. Another reason for Ghana’s scores may be that respondents took into ac￾count that knowledge of ALPI activities and results was limited to active participants (country 
team members and particular committee members). Therefore, benefits of ALPI activities, es￾pecially in terms of expected change in both organizational attitudes and practices, have been 
limited. 
A small number of those interviewed who had a perspective on the whole ALPI II initiative 
were asked to assess the extent to which the strategic objective had been met in terms of the 
over-all project. Of those, all gave scores in the medium range. 
In analyzing the over-all accomplishments of ALPI II at this time, the scores in the medium 
range seem to be most in line with the evaluator’s findings. 
B. COUNTRY TEAMS’ EXPECTATIONS 
As part of the evaluation, members of all four country teams were asked to indicate to what 
extent their expectations had been met. (A few members of country teams indicated they had 
no expectations or were uncertain of what they were; therefore, they are not included in this 
sample.) Respondents were asked to give a ranking on a scale of “1 to 10,” with “1” being “not 
at all” and “10” being “completely.” These responses include opinions of sixteen NGOs, seven 
PVOs, and only one response from a USAID mission representative (See Table 2, p. 9). Results 
for each country are as follows: 
Reasons for these scores include: 
„ Disappointment at the relatively low level of collaboration in some countries due to 
lack of interest of USAID missions or PVOs or both.
„ Lack of interest in activities chosen by country teams.
„ Continued lack of access to USAID direct funding to local NGOs.
„ No opportunity for building organizational capacity.
These results indicate that the extent to which most country team members in Ghana and Mali 
thought their expectations were met were the same even though greater results have been 
accomplished in Ghana than in Mali. In no country is the level of expectations met in the high￾est range (“7” to “10”) on the scale of “1” to “10.” Kenya has the lowest level of expectations met 
but this country team suffered the greatest delays in getting started because of the need to 
change the secretariat twice before being able to develop an action plan. If one examines the 
range of responses, even in Ghana, there was at least one ranking at the level of “4” (at the bot￾tom of the “medium” range) and one ranking at the level of “10” or the very top of the high 
range. The spread among the countries indicates quite a variance in views regarding the ex￾tent to which expectations were met. These scores are similar to the responses of the country 
teams regarding the extent to which the strategic objective has been met in each country and 
9 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
point as well to a lack of clear performance indicators and measures of success — and lack of 
information about ALPI results in the wider PVO/NGO community. 
C. MUTUAL TRUST, KNOWLEDGE, BALANCE OF POWER, & TENSION 
In the self-evaluation workshop in Ghana, members of all four country teams were asked to 
indicate if mutual knowledge, mutual trust, tension, and balance of power between and 
among the three stakeholder groups in their particular country had increased, decreased, or 
remained the same — compared with the start of the ALPI II initiative. The choice of “more” 
was a “3”; the “same” was a “2”; and “less” was a “1.” Of the total of 20 respondents, 15 were 
NGO representatives, 4 were PVO representatives, and 1 was a USAID mission representative. 
Each respondent was asked to indicate his or her individual perspective as to whether there 
was more, less or the same of each of the four categories and to give a score for each of the 
stakeholders vis-à-vis the other two. In other words, did the respondent think that NGOs had 
more mutual trust between themselves and PVOs and USAID; did PVOs have more mutual 
trust between themselves and NGOs and USAID; and did USAID have more mutual trust be￾tween themselves and NGOs and PVOs? Because these instructions were ambiguous and 
therefore open to interpretation, the evaluator has a low level of confidence in the results. Nev￾ertheless, they do give a rough indication of what the respondents felt was the current state of 
affairs regarding these four important attitudes (See Tables 3A, 3B, 3C, and 3D, p. 12) 
The one clear pattern in these results — and a very important one — is the decrease in tension, 
whether perceived or real, between and among stakeholder groups. This is an important find￾ing since ALPI’s goal is to promote more collaboration among these parties. In fact, ALPI’s origi￾nal hypothesis was that the more these groups know about each other’s interests and focus, 
the less animosity there would be among them. This is the second rationale for Intermediate 
Result No. 1, information exchange. Beyond this finding, there are no clear patterns regarding 
trust, knowledge or balance of power. Respondents from Ghana, Kenya and Senegal all 
thought that NGOs had more mutual trust and mutual knowledge between themselves and 
PVOs and USAID, but Mali respondents felt the level of NGOs’ mutual trust and mutual knowl￾edge vis-à-vis the other stakeholders had not increased. Kenyans felt that the balance of power 
between NGOs and USAID had improved. Once again, as in earlier responses to questions 
posed to the country teams, the results reveal a lack of clear performance indicators and a lack 
of planning and strategy development to achieve outcomes. This set of data and the earlier 
Table 1: Extent to Which Strategic Objective Was Met 
Extent SO Was Met No. of Respondents Percentage of Respondents 
Met little or not at all 3 9% 
Met moderately 21 64% 
Met highly or completely 9 27% 
Table 2: Extent to Which Country Teams’ Expectations Have Been Met 
Country Team Mean (Average) Median (Half-Way Point) 
Ghana (9 respondents) 6.4 6 
Kenya (7 respondents) 4.7 4 
Senegal (3 respondents) 5.6 6 
Mali (5 respondents) 6.4 6 
Range of Responses 
7 (4-10) 
5 (3-7) 
4 (5-8) 
4 (4-7) 
10 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
data reported provide little insight into how tripartite country teams are created successfully 
and how they might be replicated in other countries (a goal of the Intermediate Result No. 2 of 
this ALPI II initiative). 
D. SUITABILITY FOR ADDRESSING TRIPARTITE COLLABORATION 
1. Country teams formed 
Country teams were formed and have functioned in all four countries, but they vary in terms of 
their cohesion and effectiveness. As noted earlier, in some of the teams, there has been very 
limited interest on the part of PVOs and senior levels of USAID missions. While all teams re￾ported different levels of mutual trust and understanding, and effective working relationships 
have been developed in some teams, in no instance have these positive achievements ex￾tended to the wider community of NGOs, PVOs and USAID missions, as had been the hope of 
the overall ALPI II process. 
In all four countries, ALPI country teams were formed and have met on a regular basis (usually 
once a month). In some countries, these meetings have been held on a rotating basis at each 
of the stakeholder’s offices to encourage ownership and to expose the stakeholders to each 
other’s office environment. These meetings have enabled the particular representatives of the 
three stakeholder groups to get to know each other better and to understand each other’s op￾erations more fully — a microcosm of what was hoped for in the wider community of NGOs, 
PVOs and USAID. In certain of the countries, respondents indicated that the meetings had re￾sulted in a trusting relationship being developed among the members of the country team. 
For some of the African NGO representatives involved, the country team meetings enabled 
them to enter the USAID building for the very first time, something they considered a real 
achievement. In two countries, US PVO representatives expressed the concern that team meet￾ings took a lot of time and did not accomplish much. In some instances, the PVOs were not 
interested in the activities chosen (e.g. direct access to USAID funding by national NGOs) — 
even though they agreed to their selection. Therefore, their interest in the ALPI process was 
never optimal and has waned over time, resulting in very limited commitment to the initiative. 
In some instances, the US PVO representatives have gone off the country team or the particular 
PVO representative has handed over responsibility to a more junior colleague. 
As for USAID, in Ghana, as noted earlier, there has been a strong and continuing commitment 
to the ALPI II process on the part of the mission director. In the other three countries, while 
there has been more or less continuous involvement by USAID mission representatives in the 
country team — and even some interest expressed by the mission director in at least one 
country — USAID involvement has been less enthusiastic than in Ghana. In the other countries, 
in the span of eight months from April to November, all the principal USAID mission represen￾tatives involved in the ALPI process have left their missions. In one country, a new staff person 
has been assigned to the ALPI process but in the other two, it is not yet clear whether a new 
person will be designated for ALPI. Therefore, it remains to be seen whether there will be regu￾lar USAID representation in the future in these two countries, particularly given the current 
turmoil in USAID regarding its future, budgets and staffing levels, following the absorption of 
USAID into the State Department and the resultant changes in program emphasis.13
2. Country team secretariats chosen 
The design of the ALPI II process assumed that NGO networks in the countries chosen would 
be strong, well-functioning organizations with appropriate ability to convene the over-all NGO 
13. Internal discussions were continuing at USAID during the time of this evaluation and it was unclear 
what final decisions would be taken regarding these issues. 
11 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
community, facilitate meetings and events and communicate effectively about results. The 
reality is that the limited capacity of NGO networks in these four countries has hampered the 
full achievement of results. 
In three of the four countries, the NGO network was the organization initially chosen — or cho￾sen very early in the process — to be the secretariat.14 This was done because these networks 
were already set up to be convening mechanisms for the NGO community (national and inter￾national). InterAction’s expectation was that they would have current databases of their mem￾bers, communication channels set up to reach their members, visibility as the place to go to in 
order to gather the NGO community, and where community-wide positions or principles 
should be developed.15 In the fourth country, Ghana, a Pan African network (POSDEV) whose 
headquarters are in Ghana was chosen as the secretariat because GAPVOD, the national net￾work, was not functioning properly. As it turned out, in the other three countries, the networks 
had various problems that hindered their performance as the secretariat to varying degrees. In 
Kenya, the NGO Council, which had been chosen as the secretariat, soon had leadership and 
governance problems and had to hand over the job to another organization, Christian Partners 
Development Agency (CPDA). In Mali and Senegal, leadership changes occurred in CCA/ONG 
and CONGAD. These changes, together with limitations in capacity, affected the smooth func￾tioning of the ALPI II process. 
3. Action plans developed and approved 
The development of the action plans in the four countries and then the negotiation and ap￾proval process with InterAction were accomplished, although the process took several months 
and did not result, in all instances, in all activities chosen being of equal interest to all three 
stakeholders. 
In all four countries, at least one topic — and in two cases, more than one — were of common 
interest to all three stakeholders (the standards project and the MCA in Ghana, the MCA in 
Senegal, food security in Mali, and taxation and public-private sector collaboration in Kenya). 
However, the level of enthusiasm about these topics varied within country teams, and active 
involvement in them was extremely limited in two of the four countries. 
4. Activities carried out 
The activities of interest to all three stakeholders have been those where most progress has 
been made: the development of NGO standards in Ghana; work to influence the MCA in Ghana 
and Senegal; beginning of an effort to coordinate efforts related to food security in Mali; an 
effort to harmonize the tax laws for NGOs and PVOs in Kenya; and a workshop to promote co￾operation between NGOs/PVOs and the private sector in Kenya. It should be noted, however, 
that all of these activities are in progress and ultimate results remain to be determined. 
In Ghana, a draft set of standards has been developed which are intended to govern the be￾havior of both international and national NGOs. The standards are currently being reviewed 
and edited and are expected to take effect sometime in the next several months. 
In Mali, a meeting on food security in July 2006, in which NGOs, PVOs, USAID, and the Govern￾ment of Mali participated, resulted in a formal group being created to share information every 
three months to achieve better coordination of food security efforts among the various actors. 
It is not clear whether this group has met yet. Plans for follow-up on this initiative are included 
in the Mali country team’s action plan for the final six months of ALPI II. 
14. In Kenya, the Kenya AIDS Consortium (KANCO) was the first network chosen as the secretariat, but it 
handed over responsibility within three months to the Kenya NGO Council, the national network. 
15. These networks had organized and carried out sub-regional meetings in their countries for ALPI I, and 
InterAction believed, therefore, that they had the capacity to manage the ALPI II process – an erroneous 
assumption. 
12 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
Table 3A: Changes in Mutual Trust, Knowledge, Balance of Power and Tension Among the Three Stakeholders 
Ghana* NGOs PVOs USAID 
Mutual trust Significantly more Same Same 
Mutual knowledge Significantly more Same Same 
Balance of power Same Same Same 
Tension Slightly less Slightly less Significantly less 
*7 Respondents = 6 NGO + 1 PVO 
Table 3B: Changes in Mutual Trust, Knowledge, Balance of Power and Tension Among the Three Stakeholders 
Kenya* NGOs PVOs USAID 
Mutual trust Significantly more Same Significantly more 
Mutual knowledge Significantly more Same Same 
Balance of power Significantly more balance Same Moderately more balance 
Tension Moderately less Moderately less Significantly less 
*5 Respondents = 4 NGO + 1 PVO 
Table 3C: Changes in Mutual Trust, Knowledge, Balance of Power and Tension Among the Three Stakeholders 
Mali* NGOs PVOs USAID 
Mutual trust Same Moderately less Moderately less 
Mutual knowledge Same Same Same 
Balance of power Moderately less balance Moderately less balance Same 
Tension Moderately less Significantly less Significantly less 
*5 Respondents = 3 NGO + 1 PVO + 1 USAID 
Table 3D: Changes in Mutual Trust, Knowledge, Balance of Power and Tension Among the Three Stakeholders 
Senegal* NGOs PVOs USAID 
Mutual trust Significantly more Slightly more Slightly more 
Mutual knowledge Clearly more Slightly more Significantly more 
Balance of power Slightly more balance Same Same 
Tension Significantly less Slightly less Clearly less 
*3 Respondents = 2 NGO + 1 PVO 
13 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
In Kenya, an ALPI stakeholders meeting was held at which the issue of tax burdens on NGOs 
and PVOs was discussed. This resulted in the creation of a task force to examine how interna￾tional and national NGOs are taxed by the Government of Kenya and to make recommenda￾tions to harmonize the tax regime for all NGOs. The work of this task force is currently under￾way. 
Also in Kenya, a workshop was held to explore cooperation and collaboration between PVOs/
NGOs and the private sector. While there has been no follow up as of the time of this evalua￾tion, plans to continue this initiative are included in the Kenya country team’s action plan for 
the final six months of ALPI II. 
Efforts in both Ghana and Senegal to influence the development of the Millennium Challenge 
Account compact as well as its implementation have borne fruit. In Ghana, a position on the 
Ghana Millennium Challenge Account Board has been created for an NGO representative. That 
representative was chosen by the community of NGOs active in ALPI II and is at work on the 
board already. In Senegal, CONGAD is fully engaged with the Government of Senegal and the 
Senegalese MCC in efforts to influence the compact, expected to be signed within the next few 
months. CONGAD has played an important role in calling attention to concerns of the popula￾tion in the geographic area chosen for MCC activity. While CONGAD has not yet achieved any 
concrete results such as in Ghana, it is considered a vital part of the deliberations and is well 
positioned to play a possible role in implementation as well as to monitor such implementa￾tion. It should be noted that interviews reveal that the involvement of CONGAD members in 
these efforts seems to be very limited as yet. 
In Mali, where the compact was signed in October 2006, there have not yet been similar results 
achieved through the ALPI process. There, UNDP provided money to the government to en￾sure participation of civil society in development of the compact. The Government of Mali en￾gaged its own consultants who carried out consultations in the Segou region, where a portion 
of the MCC work is to take place. Two other civil society representatives were chosen to be on 
the MCC technical committee. One was a representative of a US consulting firm who met with 
and informed US PVOs of MCA developments and served to channel PVO ideas to the MCC 
technical committee. The president of the National Council of Civil Society Organizations 
served as the representative of Malian NGOs. He channeled information to them and sought 
their input, which he passed on to the MCC. As yet, the ALPI secretariat has not played any 
bridging role that would bring all NGOs and PVOs together to agree on a common approach to 
the NGO role in implementation — or in NGO monitoring of the implementation — of the 
compact. 
There were other activities carried out in which not all three stakeholders had a strong vested 
interest. In Kenya, the ALPI country team held a workshop to train PVOs and NGOs to use the 
partnership assessment tool created by InterAction. A pilot test of the tool was then carried out 
with KeNAAM, a network of organizations working to reduce the incidence of malaria. PACT 
also tested the tool with its partner NGOs. A feedback workshop is planned to discuss the tool 
further and agree on next steps. This effort did not involve the USAID mission at all. 
Other topics chosen by the country teams were primarily of interest to African NGOs, and 
therefore did not hold the interest of PVOs and, only marginally, of USAID. For example, both 
Mali and Senegal explored how local NGOs can gain access to direct funding from USAID, and 
Mali carried out a workshop on fundraising strategies for local NGOs. In neither Senegal nor 
Mali did any US PVO representatives attend the workshops on direct funding by USAID of na￾tional NGOs. In Mali, 30 Malian NGOs attended the workshops on direct funding from USAID 
and fundraising strategies, held on the same day and facilitated by a consultant. In both coun￾tries, USAID staff made the presentations about USAID rules and regulations. These two experi￾ences in Senegal and Mali call into question the commitment of the overall country teams to 
tripartite involvement in ALPI activities. 
14 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
E. ACHIEVING INTERMEDIATE RESULTS 
1. Intermediate Result 1 
InterAction’s hope for regular and sustained information exchange among the three stake￾holder groups in the four countries was partly realized during ALPI II. The work undertaken by 
Ghana and Senegal ALPI teams in relation to the Millennium Challenge Account, together with 
significant substantive assistance from InterAction, stands out as a success of ALPI II. This is an 
example of the kind of collaboration that can advance development interests at both the 
country level and in Washington, DC. If more work like this had been accomplished, ALPI II 
would have been a resounding success. There were four other specific instances of information 
sharing workshops or meetings in Mali, Kenya and Ghana (food security in Mali, PVO/NGO — 
private sector collaboration in Kenya, the USAID Global Development Alliance in Kenya, and 
the poverty reduction strategy (PRS) in Ghana). As they organized themselves, all country 
teams used documents prepared by InterAction regarding experiences of partnership, but the 
extent to which they were read or used by the wider stakeholder constituencies is unknown. 
Lastly, a regular InterAction e-newsletter, which served as the only routine source of informa￾tion sharing among the teams, was discontinued in mid-2005. In its place, InterAction provided 
more targeted information in response to specific requests by country teams.
a. Regular information exchange 
InterAction’s expectation regarding this IR, was that “brown bag” lunches or similar kinds of 
meetings would be held in each of the four countries once a month — or at least periodically 
— where PVOs, NGOs, and USAID representatives would come together to discuss a particular 
sectoral issue. A representative from each of the three stakeholder groups, knowledgeable 
about the particular topic and the work of his or her stakeholder group in it, would be asked to 
make a brief presentation. A government representative from the appropriate ministry would 
be asked to speak as well. In this way, stakeholders could share information, gain knowledge 
and increase their understanding of the particular topic and of the work being done on it by 
the other stakeholders and the government. Ideally, greater coordination and collaboration by 
the stakeholders could result in, and even lead to, more effective development work on the 
topic. 
In reality, such regular meetings did not take place in the countries. There were four workshops 
or meetings undertaken, as noted above. These were intended to share information, increase 
knowledge and understanding, and possibly result in concrete steps to be taken as follow up. 
Other than these four cases, more routine monthly meetings did not take place. According to 
the teams, they were unable to have more due to the cost of organizing them. It is not clear 
why these were so expensive unless the ALPI secretariats were paying consultants to facilitate 
such meetings, renting hotel meeting rooms instead of using conference rooms at PVO or 
NGO offices, and giving per diems to NGOs to come into the capital city from the interior. In 
Ghana and Kenya, where the secretariats were not national NGO networks, such monthly 
meetings may have been harder to organize, given the absence of established communication 
mechanisms and databases. In Mali and Senegal, where the secretariats were both national 
NGO networks, it seems that such routine information sharing meetings on sectoral issues or 
topics of common concern do not happen with the regularity that they do at a network such as 
InterAction where brown bag meetings are held routinely on a wide variety of topics. This is 
partly due to the fact that CONGAD and CCA/ONG are based in developing countries where 
member organizations are busy carrying out field projects and capital city offices are focused 
on providing administrative and logistical support to field operations. However, for all four 
countries, the absence of monthly or routine information-sharing meetings seems to reveal a 
lack of capacity — or will — within these development communities to draw on the expertise 
present to educate one another and to look for opportunities to collaborate. Again, it also re￾veals the failure of the secretariats to feed back information on ALPI initiatives to the wider 
PVO/NGO communities. Lastly, it may also reflect the environment of competition among 
15 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
PVOs and NGOs, noted by several individuals interviewed, where organizations are unwilling 
to share information on their work for fear of losing a competitive advantage. 
b. Millennium Challenge Account 
As InterAction and three of the country teams became interested in the MCA, InterAction ALPI 
II staff undertook a study of the extent of civil society consultation in the development of the 
MCA compact in Madagascar. The purpose of this report was two-fold. It was intended to give 
feedback to the Millennium Challenge Corporation in Washington, DC regarding the extent to 
which the commitment to civil society consultation had been carried out in this particular 
country. The report was also intended as a resource to ALPI II countries as they began to organ￾ize efforts to influence development of the compact for their countries. It appears to have been 
a useful resource to the country teams in their work on the MCA. 
As already noted, the work carried out on the MCA by Ghana and Senegal, together with sig￾nificant substantive assistance by InterAction, is one of the successes of the ALPI II process thus 
far. InterAction’s assistance to the ALPI teams included the Madagascar report, meetings dur￾ing the annual Washington Week with the Millennium Challenge Corporation, interested Con￾gressional staff, and US PVOs involved in influencing the MCA process. An important meeting 
was also held with the CEO of Catholic Relief Services who became a member of the board of 
the MCC, and who continues to channel important information to InterAction and the ALPI 
country teams regarding the progress of the MCC. 
c. Documents related to partnership 
In the first year of ALPI II, just prior to leaving InterAction, Evariste Karangwa prepared 
“Partnerships in Practice: A Compendium” which included case stories of PVO/NGO partner￾ships, promising practices and a mapping exercise which examined the context for developing 
partnerships, motivations for such partnerships and how they took shape. Several organiza￾tions that had been active in ALPI I contributed to this document. A copy of this compendium 
was sent to all participants in ALPI I and II as a resource in launching ALPI II. As already noted, 
this excellent compendium was used by the country teams in determining relationship princi￾ples to be used to govern the operation of the teams. InterAction ALPI staff also used it to cre￾ate the partnership assessment tool. 
d. Regular communication from InterAction to the ALPI country teams 
Throughout ALPI I and for part of ALPI II (until September 2005) InterAction’s ALPI staff pre￾pared a monthly or sometimes bi-monthly e-newsletter for circulation to all country teams and 
others in the InterAction community who were interested in the ALPI process. The e-newsletter 
contained information about work of the country teams as well as reports on important devel￾opment topics such as the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act. This was the only regular ALPI￾wide communication that kept all stakeholders informed about the initiative. It was dis￾continued because InterAction ALPI staff could not determine that it was adding value to the 
work of the country teams and translating it into French each month was costly. Instead, Inter￾Action began to provide more targeted information in response to specific requests from 
country teams. 
2. INTERMEDIATE RESULT 2 
The ALPI II country team “model” was implemented on a pilot basis in all four countries and is 
the only such mechanism available for systematic consultations among representatives of the 
three stakeholder groups. However, only in Ghana has the country team come close to consoli￾dating itself. Most of the elements noted on page 7 need to be present in order for a country 
team to establish and sustain itself and launch a successful country-level dialogue. Even in 
16 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
Ghana, the stakeholder representatives on the country team still need to create information￾sharing mechanisms in order to fulfill their responsibility to feed back regular information on 
ALPI activities and results to the NGO/PVO and USAID community as a whole and continue to 
get their input to initiatives underway. This is essential in order for the ALPI process to be a 
truly successful national dialogue with the potential to lead to greater coordination and col￾laboration among the three stakeholder groups. In hindsight, because of the amount of time 
needed to establish these multi-stakeholder initiatives, the ALPI II cooperative agreement 
should have been a five-year, rather than a three-year, effort. 
a. Partnership Principles as guidelines for country team development 
The partnership principles developed by InterAction ALPI staff were provided to all stake￾holder representatives as the country teams were forming and were used as the basis for how 
the tripartite country teams should operate. The partnership assessment tool was introduced 
by InterAction to each country’s community of PVOs and NGOs while it was in draft form, and 
feedback was requested. The tool focuses on how Northern PVOs and Southern NGOs can 
work together to develop partnerships based on equity and mutual accountability. According 
to interviews, feedback from PVOs was that the tool was too idealistic and that “their relation￾ship with NGOs is determined by USAID.” In other words, because of USAID requirements and 
restrictions, (i.e., limited time to design proposals thereby pre-empting any possibility of col￾laborative design with NGOs, specific reporting formats and accountability requirements) it 
would not be possible to develop partnerships with NGOs in the way suggested by the part￾nership assessment tool. NGOs, for their part, also found the tool and the approach to be ideal￾istic in the sense that such a partnership orientation could only apply to two organizations, 
which were equally powerful to begin with. Nevertheless, they applauded the effort and ap￾preciated the focus on values to be developed in partnership, such as trust, transparency and 
integrity. 
Although the partnership principles were used as the foundation for the operation of the 
country team, the partnership assessment tool was discussed seriously and tested in only one 
country, Kenya. Interviews conducted with Kenyans indicate that several found the partnership 
assessment tool to be quite useful and important. While the formal testing of the instrument 
was carried out with only one network of NGOs, other PVOs/NGOs have tested it and intend to 
use it in their work. 
b. Sub-regional conferences on lessons learned 
According to InterAction’s proposal (modification) submitted to USAID/Washington for ALPI II, 
two major sub-regional conferences were to take place in Africa in order to enable country 
teams to share “their promising practices and lessons learned with other attendees from the 
region, so that those in the process of forming their own country teams can learn how to begin 
a national dialogue.”16 The proposal called for up to three participants from 15 countries to 
participate in the sub-regional conference — in addition to those from the four country teams 
— to learn about the tripartite partnership model and to ask for technical assistance to enable 
them to begin the process in their own countries. InterAction also committed itself to prepare 
a publication, which would compile lessons learned to disseminate as a tool to be used in repli￾cating the ALPI model. 
The self-evaluation workshop held in Ghana in September 2006 was a limited version of the 
sub-regional conference described in the previous paragraph. There, the four country teams 
were able to reflect on their own experiences, determine lessons learned, and engage with the 
other teams to learn about their experiences, challenges faced, and how they were resolved. 
Given the time required to launch the country teams and to have them carry out activities, the 
self-evaluation workshop was the first effort at capturing lessons learned from the ALPI II initia￾tive. 
16. Op cit, p. 7. 
17 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
As noted above, only in Ghana have all team members exhibited a sense of ownership of the 
ALPI process. In two of the three other countries, PVO representatives interviewed indicated a 
diminishing level of interest in the ALPI process and pessimism that it would continue after the 
end of the InterAction funding for the activities underway. Moreover, with USAID presently 
undergoing major changes and re-organization, it is not at all clear that missions will continue 
to designate staff to participate in the ALPI country teams. 
3. INTERMEDIATE RESULT 3 
As far as can be determined from the proposal (modification) submitted to USAID by InterAc￾tion, ALPI themes were to be determined by each country team. No over-all themes were to be 
chosen ahead of time by InterAction that would then be taken up by all the country teams. 
Whether joint advocacy action was undertaken was dependent on the topics chosen. Given 
the topics chosen and the actual progress made thus far on each, a limited amount of advo￾cacy work has been undertaken. In Ghana and Senegal, ALPI country teams have worked to 
influence the development of the MCA compact in their countries. Also in Ghana, ALPI is the 
framework through which NGOs are involved in the government’s formulation of the NGO law, 
and several meetings between NGOs and government have taken place. (The NGO standards 
are being put in place as a self-monitoring accountability mechanism and are an important 
tool in NGO advocacy efforts vis-à-vis the government.) In the other countries, once initiatives 
are more developed, advocacy work may be taken up (e.g. food security in Mali and the tax 
scheme in Kenya). 
Interviews indicate that the ALPI participants who attended the InterAction Forum and Wash￾ington Week benefited from seeing the ways in which US PVOs undertake advocacy work vis￾à-vis the US Congress and the US Government. 
a. Expectations for advocacy in ALPI II 
The country teams to be created in ALPI II — together with their wider NGO/PVO communities 
— were expected to engage in joint advocacy toward national governments or international 
or multilateral donor entities on important development topics. Tools they might use to under￾take advocacy could be task forces created, development of joint case studies on a particular 
topic, working papers, use of the media, or introduction of legislation. 
b. Opportunities for advocacy work and results in ALPI II 
Actual advocacy-related work in ALPI II has been limited because of the topics chosen by the 
four country teams and because of delays in carrying out activities. As noted above, the most 
advocacy work has been carried out thus far on the MCA in Ghana and Senegal through the 
ALPI II process, with significant assistance from InterAction — as noted earlier. The Ghana ALPI 
team, led by POSDEV, and the Senegal ALPI team, led by CONGAD, have gathered and ana￾lyzed information regarding the MCA in their countries, participated in national meetings and 
stated NGO/PVO positions vis-à-vis the proposed compacts, and worked to influence the de￾velopment of the compacts in their countries. In Ghana, the ALPI team succeeded in getting an 
NGO representative on the MCA board. In Senegal, CONGAD has carried out a study of the 
views of the population of the targeted area outside Dakar, expected to become an industrial 
zone through the assistance of the MCC. As of the time of this evaluation, the CONGAD study 
was complete and was to be presented to the MCC working group. As noted earlier, InterAc￾tion provided continual assistance and information to these efforts. 
Beyond the advocacy work on the MCA and the work on the NGO law in Ghana noted above, it 
is likely that if activities begun by all four country teams continue, advocacy work will be un￾dertaken. In Kenya, once the work of the NGO taxation task force is completed, advocacy work 
will be necessary if the country team proposes legislation to harmonize the tax scheme for all 
NGOs. In Mali, the food security committee that has been set up may, at some point, wish to 
18 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
advocate for changes in government policy. Thus far, the Mali and Senegal ALPI teams’ work 
on direct USAID funding for NGOs is only in the information-sharing stage. These teams may 
wish to develop a strategy, hopefully with PVO assistance, to work to convince the USAID mis￾sions to provide changes in their requirements and regulations that would enable local NGOs 
to access funds. 
VI. CHALLENGES 
Earlier in this report, we examined reasons why the Ghana country team achieved significant 
progress in its ALPI activities. Following here are reasons why the other countries had more 
limited results: 
„ Limitations of the ALPI II design.
„ Delays at different points in the process.
„ Limited organizational commitment.
„ Weak communication within and among countries.
„ Limited funding levels for the country teams.
A. LIMITATIONS OF THE ALPI II DESIGN 
The design of ALPI II had its origins in recommendations which ALPI I participants from African 
NGOs, PVOs and USAID mission representatives made at three different times: at the end of 
each sub-regional conference, in the evaluation of ALPI I, and in discussions about the evalua￾tion. The InterAction proposal to USAID for the modification of the cooperative agreement for 
the ALPI II initiative speaks of “unanimous support for the continuation of the ALPI program”17
on the part of the tripartite stakeholders. It talks of the importance of creating several country 
teams which could launch national-level dialogues with the expectation that these dialogues 
would lead to joint activities to increase coordination and collaboration among the three 
stakeholder groups. The modification submitted to USAID by InterAction for ALPI II included 
the outline of the national country team framework and stated that the stakeholders will de￾sign the program themselves, including the decision-making process, implementation, evalua￾tion and the choice of discussion themes and research topics. 
The design of ALPI II was limited in two major ways: 
Lack of a coherent vision and clear goals that linked InterAction to the country 
activities 
The most important problem with the design was that there was no clear over-arching vision 
and clear goals that linked InterAction to the country activities in terms of what InterAction, 
together with the country teams, wanted to accomplish. In other words, there was no “glue” 
bringing the four country team efforts together with InterAction work to achieve major pro￾grammatic or advocacy results on particular development topics. While a detailed multi￾stakeholder process was to be created and carried out, the purpose for this process was vague 
— to develop greater collaboration among the stakeholders. There was no incentive for, or 
commitment by InterAction to serve as a leader in this initiative by promoting active participa￾tion of its members. ALPI was never seen by InterAction leadership as a strategic opportunity. 
Nor was there any indication of how the four countries might work together on topics of com￾mon concern other than to share lessons learned. 
17. Op cit, p. 3. 
19 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
While it was expected that InterAction would be the catalyst to launch the country processes, 
the benefit of this initiative to InterAction and its members at headquarters level was absent. 
Had there been some indication as to how greater collaboration at the country level on spe￾cific important advocacy objectives could have been linked with InterAction and its members’ 
advocacy efforts in the US, this may have served as the incentive to engage the leadership of 
InterAction, together with its members at headquarters level. As it was, InterAction leadership 
(in both ALPI I and II) took no interest in this work and did nothing to urge its members to en￾courage their field offices to participate. ALPI staffers were never able to develop an effective 
strategy to persuade their organization’s leadership of the potential benefit to InterAction. 
The modification submitted to USAID by InterAction stated that:“Discourse informed by multi￾ple perspectives leads to better cooperative work whether in formal partnerships or more in￾formal operational relationships. Moving towards more effective collaboration and partnership 
at the country level will thus be the result of the iterative and synergistic nature of these proc￾esses, as well as the interaction and exchange of ideas by and between the three actors them￾selves.”18 The emphasis was all on the process and not on the substance. What precisely this 
discourse would focus on was left to each country team to determine. While there was some 
expectation for regional or sub-regional conferences for participating countries, there was no 
discussion of how such conferences would be useful to participants if each country were work￾ing on a different topic — except to learn from one another about how the process was being 
carried out. Nor was there any discussion of how the results of the four countries’ work would 
be compiled and synthesized to be of use to InterAction’s membership or the wider develop￾ment community. 
Faulty assumption about African NGO network capacity to perform the role of 
secretariat 
InterAction’s decision to have an African NGO or network in each of the four countries desig￾nated as the secretariat without first carefully assessing their capacity was a significant mistake 
and caused serious problems in the ALPI process in all four countries. 
There seem to have been two assumptions in the design: 
„ The first was that the NGO or network already had the capacity to carry out the role of 
secretariat effectively.
„ The second was that being the secretariat would somehow automatically strengthen 
the capacity of the particular organization – without any plan for a mentoring role pro￾vided by InterAction or any other organization.
Although there was a set of criteria to be followed in choosing the African organization, the 
clear expectation was that the existing national NGO network in each country would play that 
role — because such networks are set up to play a convening role and to communicate with 
the wider NGO community. Moreover, networks had successfully hosted the ALPI I sub￾regional conferences in all the countries where they had taken place; and there was a belief 
that they could handle the management of the ALPI II process. In all four countries chosen, the 
NGO networks were designated as the secretariat.19 As noted earlier, all four had significant 
problems and limited capacity to manage and facilitate the ALPI process. In two countries, the 
NGO networks were dysfunctional and the ALPI secretariat was eventually set up in other or￾ganizations. In the other two countries, the networks had leadership problems and limited ca￾pacity that presented important challenges to the effective management of the ALPI process. 
It seems that InterAction decided to have an African organization assume the role of the secre￾tariat out of an idealistic sense that this would redress the balance of power among the three 
stakeholder groups. Leaving the choice of the secretariat to the particular stakeholder groups 
18. Op cit, p. 3. 
19. In Kenya, the Kenya AIDS NGO Consortium (KANCO) was originally chosen as the secretariat but 
handed over the role to the NGO Council only a few months later. 
20 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
in each country might have been a better approach. Or, alternatively, planning a clear and con￾sistent mentoring relationship for the secretariat by the field office of a US PVO in the particu￾lar country, by InterAction or by an Africa-based coordinator should have been done.
B. DELAYS AT DIFFERENT POINTS IN THE PROCESS 
There were several significant delays during the ALPI II process, which meant that expected 
results have not been achieved thus far in the initiative. Changes in ALPI personnel at InterAc￾tion, problems with the secretariat chosen in all four countries, delays in developing action 
plans and having them approved, and getting money out to the countries caused the work in 
all four countries to move slowly. 
The ALPI II cooperative agreement modification was signed in late September 2003. Evariste 
Karangwa, who had been InterAction’s Program Manager of ALPI I, left the organization in De￾cember 2003. His successor, Sylvain Browa, began work at InterAction in April 2004. Little work 
was done during this time to choose countries and start the process of country team develop￾ment. This hiatus of six months caused delays in getting the initiative underway. This meant 
that three of the country teams (Ghana, Mali and Senegal) did not have their first meeting until 
September 2004 a full year after the modification had been signed. The fourth country team in 
Kenya was only formed in December 2004, and then delayed again significantly because of 
problems with the first two organizations chosen as the secretariat. Further delays ensued in 
development and approval of action plans and in getting money to the particular country 
teams. All these steps took an inordinate amount of time, due partly to either a very broad con￾sultative process used to determine activities (as in Senegal), overly ambitious or poorly devel￾oped draft action plans, and delays by InterAction in preparing grant agreements with the par￾ticular country teams — or a combination of these. As a result of these delays, most of the ac￾tivities in the four countries began in late 2005 or even in 2006; and most have not achieved 
concrete results as of the time of this evaluation. 
C. LIMITED ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT 
Particularly as regards PVOs and USAID missions, there appears to have been limited organiza￾tional commitment in many cases. As for the PVOs, this was largely due to a lack of interest in 
the topics chosen by the country team, even though these PVO representatives had partici￾pated in the choice. Regarding USAID missions, except for Ghana, there was never a strong 
commitment made to the process by the mission directors. 
In the case of some of the PVOs, senior-level staff agreed to be members of the country team 
but later turned over involvement to more junior staff when they did not perceive enough 
value in the process. This involvement in ALPI was in addition to a full-time work load so the 
incentive to participate and the likely value had to be strong. 
According to interviews, some of the USAID missions were skeptical of ALPI II from the begin￾ning, based on attitudes regarding what they considered limited results from ALPI I. While cer￾tain of the missions designated a staff person to serve on the country team, that participation 
did not carry with it the support of the senior levels of the missions. In some cases, regarding 
both PVOs and USAID missions, the involvement of individuals seemed to be driven more by 
personal interest than an organizational commitment. In several instances, personnel changes 
were made in PVOs and USAID missions during ALPI II that affected the level of participation of 
those organizations. In one country team, a particular PVO representative had been very active 
and committed to ALPI II activities but when this individual was transferred to another country, 
his replacement showed no interest in ALPI activities. As of the time of the evaluation, the PVO 
had not instructed this person to participate. Personnel turn-over in PVOs and missions is 
much more frequent than in the NGOs and has disrupted participation. In both USAID missions 
and PVOs, there appears to be little to no organizational memory passed from one participant 
to another to enable effective continuation of involvement when a newly designated repre￾sentative begins to participate in the ALPI activities. 
21 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
D. LIMITED COMMUNICATION WITHIN AND AMONG COUNTRIES 
Other than e-mail communication among country team members, regular, systematic commu￾nication from the secretariats in the four countries to the full NGO/PVO communities was ex￾tremely poor, and in some cases, non-existent. Therefore, only the country teams, themselves, 
were well-informed about ALPI activities. For its part, as noted earlier, InterAction prepared a 
monthly e-newsletter for all country teams and others interested in ALPI but stopped doing 
this in September 2005 in favor of more targeted information sharing in response to country 
team requests. This meant there was no ALPI-wide regular communication to keep people in￾formed and motivated. Each country team did have a representative on the ALPI advisory com￾mittee that met twice a year. There, these representatives made presentations about their 
teams’ progress and challenges, which were then discussed by the full committee. 
According to several interviews, communication from the secretariats in all of the countries 
was sporadic at best and sometimes non-existent. While communication within the country 
teams by email apparently was good, more widespread communication to the full NGO/PVO 
community was very sparse. One PVO respondent said, “ALPI doesn’t exist. We haven’t heard 
anything about it from the secretariat since we were in the first meeting where we endorsed 
the choice of PVO representative for the country team.” This situation seems to have been the 
case in all four countries. Only the country teams were well informed about ALPI II activities 
and progress. 
The times when country teams shared information and learned from each other were during 
the InterAction Forum and Washington Week, attended by an average of three to five persons 
from each team, and on regular teleconferences between InterAction and country teams 
where updates on progress in other countries were provided.
E. LIMITED FUNDING LEVELS FOR THE COUNTRY TEAMS 
Many interview respondents from all four countries indicated that the financial resources avail￾able from InterAction were not sufficient to carry out the activities they had planned. These 
“incentive funds” had been intended as a catalyst to the launch of activities country teams 
viewed as particularly important. InterAction hoped that the missions and local NGO/PVO 
communities in the countries could identify other money to supplement these funds. Other 
than in-kind contributions of time and resources by NGOs, PVOs and missions, and the under￾writing of the private sector collaboration workshop in Kenya by the Cooperative Bank, no 
funds have been raised for ALPI activities. Raising money for such a forum is difficult since it 
falls outside the normal development project framework. The fact that all the country teams 
looked to InterAction for the money and have not succeeded in raising money on their own 
calls into question the commitment of these teams to the activities taken up — and whether 
they are perceived as priorities. If the topics were important enough to the teams, it seems 
they would have persisted in raising funds for them. 
VII. ROLE OF INTERACTION IN ALPI II 
The evaluation of ALPI I gave a generally favorable review of InterAction’s management of the 
program. The evaluation endorsed InterAction’s continued role as facilitator and manager of 
ALPI II. The expectation was that InterAction would be a catalyst in launching the ALPI II initia￾tive in the particular countries and would continue to provide information and networking 
assistance but that the country teams would play the major role in managing their own ALPI 
work. In addition, because InterAction held the cooperative agreement with USAID, it was re￾sponsible for monitoring progress toward achievement of the strategic objective. In reality, 
because of difficulties already discussed regarding the role of the secretariats in three of the 
four countries and the lack of any mentoring arrangements for these secretariats, InterAction 
22 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
ALPI staff ended up playing a bigger role in providing technical assistance, guidance and over￾sight of ALPI activities in the countries. As noted earlier, InterAction, both in Washington and at 
country levels, played an important role in providing information to, and linking country teams 
with, key representatives of the MCA, Congressional staff, and US PVOs, regarding the MCA 
and the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and USAID regarding the Global Develop￾ment Alliance in Kenya. 
For the most part, interview respondents valued InterAction’s role in bringing the ALPI II proc￾ess to the country level and launching it, providing guidance on the development of action 
plans, feedback on the over-all process, financial assistance (although all country teams felt it 
was not sufficient, as noted earlier), and information and networking assistance on key initia￾tives. African NGO and PVO field staff respondents were particularly appreciative of Washing￾ton Week activities and the value they derived therefrom, although certain USAID respondents 
felt the trips to the InterAction Forum and Washington Week were not a good use of resources 
and others felt they could have been organized more effectively. 
Interview respondents were very critical of InterAction’s failure to persuade headquarters staff 
of PVOs to encourage and support participation of their field staff in ALPI activities. As noted 
elsewhere, although InterAction ALPI staff made efforts directly to PVO headquarters staff and 
through the ALPI advisory committee, there was an almost total lack of effort by InterAction 
leadership — during ALPI II or ALPI I, for that matter — to convince the leadership of PVOs in 
their headquarters of the value of participation in ALPI activities at country levels. (As noted 
earlier, this failure had its roots in the flawed design of ALPI II.) It should also be noted that In￾terAction, itself, had its own leadership difficulties in 2005 and 2006 and a transition to a new 
CEO in mid-2006. This prevented ALPI staff from developing a useful strategy for greater in￾volvement in the program by InterAction leadership during this time. 
VIII. LESSONS LEARNED 
n Creating an ALPI-type initiative in the midst of long-established hierarchical relationships 
of USAID missions, PVO field offices and NGOs is important but very difficult and must in￾clude strong enough incentives for each of the stakeholders to commit their time and re￾sources.
The current relationships among USAID missions, PVOs and NGOs have been in place a 
very long time. Even though everyone says that local capacity should be strengthened and 
that new ways to achieve development effectiveness should be sought, determining new 
ways to collaborate to achieve these goals takes time, openness to new ways of doing 
things and humility. Moreover, everyone already has a full-time job and little time to de￾vote to such an endeavor. Therefore, incentives are key in attracting all stakeholders to 
commit their time and energy to such an effort. 
o A well-functioning NGO network is the ideal organization to be the secretariat for an ALPI￾type initiative.
In all countries, ALPI country teams had difficulty carrying out action plans because of 
leadership and/or governance problems of the NGO network or platform in the particular 
country. In Ghana and Kenya, the country teams overcame the problems of their national 
networks by placing the secretariat in different organizations with the interest and com￾mitment to carry out the work. However, the arrangements were not ideal in terms of com￾munication and outreach. An ALPI-type process needs to have an effective network as the 
secretariat in order to ensure that the work of the initiative is carried out well, that the 
NGO/PVO community is involved, regularly informed of progress, and able to provide in￾put to initiatives, and that results which benefit all stakeholders are achieved. 
p Effective facilitation and negotiation skills are essential in guiding the discussions and the 
decision-making process concerning shared goals and priorities in an initiative such as 
ALPI that involves a variety of stakeholders with diverse interests.
23 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
These skills were essential to ensure successful “buy-in” by all three stakeholders to the 
activities ultimately chosen for joint action. Only in Ghana was this done in a fully effective 
way. 
q An NGO sector initiative such as the ALPI II process requires significant time for informa￾tion sharing, organization, mobilization, and advocacy efforts to be carried out. The ALPI II 
cooperative agreement should have had a five-year rather than a three-year duration.
It was unrealistic to expect that concrete results would have been achieved in three years’ 
time. Such an initiative — taking place outside the normal framework of development pro￾jects — takes a long time to take shape and yield results. 
r Fully utilizing the ALPI framework — by linking InterAction and its outreach, access to pol￾icy makers and expertise with country-level advocacy efforts on a common topic such as 
the MCA — produced important results for Ghana and Senegal and should have been 
done for other important development topics.
The fact that ALPI was designed without clearly defining the value InterAction would de￾rive from linkages with four country-level development initiatives was a missed strategic 
opportunity, both in regard to the potential for progress on important topics as well as for 
providing an incentive to the leadership of InterAction and its member agencies to ac￾tively support the initiative. 
s Frequent and effective two-way communication is essential to be able to engage a na￾tional community of NGOs and PVOs in dialogue and potential advocacy action on devel￾opment topics of significant interest and importance.
Regular and timely communication is key to the effective functioning of an initiative such 
as ALPI II. Such communication was sorely lacking in all four countries and directly limited 
the results achieved. Moreover, the failure to share information on ALPI activities and re￾sults with, and seek input on the initiatives from, the PVO/NGO community in each country 
limited a sense of ownership of ALPI to the members of each country team. 
IX. RECOMMENDATIONS 
There are two sets of recommendations. The first set of short-term recommendations — listed 
in priority order — was proposed in the self-evaluation workshop held in Ghana in September 
2006, to be implemented in the remaining six months of the USAID-funded ALPI II program. 
The second set of long-term recommendations is proposed by the evaluator for any future 
ALPI-type activity. 
A. SHORT-TERM RECOMMENDATIONS 
n It is imperative to clearly define the complementary roles and responsibilities of the three 
stakeholder groups in Africa’s development.
o InterAction needs to be more pro-active in encouraging USAID and PVOs to catalyze the 
interest of their field offices in ALPI countries.
p Country team members should work harder to deepen relationships at the country level.
q ALPI objectives require longer-term activities, beyond three years of implementation.
r InterAction should provide more visibility to ALPI at its annual forum, i.e., the opportunity 
for a plenary session presentation on African development by ALPI participants.
s Country teams should develop activities that incorporate the interests of all three of the 
primary stakeholder groups.
24 
Evaluation Report of ALPI II 
B. LONG-TERM RECOMMENDATIONS 
n InterAction needs to re-design the ALPI initiative in such a way that it links directly to the 
new goals adopted through the coalition’s recent strategic plan and to key initiatives that 
InterAction is undertaking.
It was a failure of ALPI II that InterAction, itself, did not have a “stake” in the work of the 
country teams and did not work directly with them to achieve results on important devel￾opment topics — other than the work on the MCA. InterAction’s new goal to demonstrate 
PVO/NGO accountability and impact in development and humanitarian action may be a 
way in which InterAction might shape a continuation of the ALPI initiative, which would 
link its own agenda with interests of the NGO sector in African countries. InterAction’s new 
effort to conduct research on the development impacts of aid reform in five countries may 
represent an opportunity to link the organization with ALPI teams in African countries on 
this topic of common interest. 
o InterAction should use its credibility and power to lobby governmental and private donors 
and PVOs to commit ample resources to strengthen local capacity in African countries, 
beginning with the national NGO networks.
The limited capacity of national NGO networks in Africa has been a long-standing problem 
ever since large numbers of local NGOs began to be created. The majority of these net￾works have never had the level of capacity and sustained leadership needed to serve their 
memberships in the important ways necessary to enable NGOs and PVOs to work together 
to operate effective development programs and to advocate to improve national and local 
policies related to important development issues. 
p Prior to designing a new ALPI initiative, InterAction should conduct an open-ended discus￾sion with African NGOs, PVOs and USAID missions in the four ALPI countries to learn what 
the highest priorities of each are, discuss what InterAction’s highest priorities are, and how 
the country teams might be willing to agree on a common objective which they could 
work together with InterAction to achieve.
X. CONCLUSION 
Although all stakeholder groups involved in this endeavor agreed on the need for a forum 
such as ALPI and noted its value in interviews undertaken, one has to question the true desire 
for it, given the results of this evaluation. It seems that all three of the stakeholders have higher 
priorities than to create and sustain such a forum. Having said that, we have seen encouraging 
signs in Ghana regarding the willingness of all stakeholders to commit themselves to work to￾gether on a jointly-negotiated set of activities. Had the key elements of ownership been pre￾sent in the other three countries, it is possible that more impressive results may have been 
achieved. What remains a problem is that InterAction, although it has hosted this program for 
many years, has never defined for itself the value of this initiative to its work. This has been a 
lost opportunity and should be corrected in any future ALPI-type process that InterAction de￾cides to pursue. InterAction’s own primary goals for its membership must be incorporated into 
such a process — both for the good of the membership and for the larger development work 
in which we are all involved. 
25 
Appendices 
APPENDIX 1: SCOPE OF WORK EVALUATION OF THE AFRICA LIAISON PROGRAM 
INITIATIVE (2003 – 2006) 
History of the ALPI Cooperative Agreement 
The Africa Liaison Program Initiative (ALPI) is a tripartite effort to improve the effectiveness of 
US assistance to Africa. ALPI operates within the framework of the Development Fund for Af￾rica’s mandate for USAID to consult with African, US and other private voluntary organizations 
(PVOs) involved in long-term grassroots development in defining USAID’s operational priori￾ties for Africa. ALPI creates a venue, outside of the traditional procurement sphere, for African 
NGOs, US PVOs, and USAID to collaboratively, identify, discuss and address common chal￾lenges at the policy, practice, and operational relationship levels. 
ALPI’s first cooperative agreement with USAID extended from October 1, 1999 through Sep￾tember 30, 2002. It was the fourth in a series of similar but relatively smaller projects that be￾gan in 1989, and the first to convene regular forums at the sub-regional level in Africa, in addi￾tion to annual meetings in Washington, DC. The agreement has since known several modifica￾tions. The current modification, which extends from December 1, 2003 through November 30, 
2006, uses the following indicators to track progress and assess achievements: 
Indicator 1: Partners demonstrate shared ownership of the ALPI process. 
Indicator 2: Partners implement “new partnership” guidelines. 
Indicator 3: Partners carry out joint action items. 
The current cycle of ALPI (2003 – 2006) works towards the following intermediate results (IR): 
IR 1. Exchanged information to enhance learning and collaboration. 
IR 2. “New partnership” concept adopted in selected countries. 
IR 3. Joint action for advocacy on issues of common interest implemented. 
To advance its programmatic objectives, ALPI’s current cycle also embodies a number of sig￾nificant changes from the previous approach of periodic events at the sub-regional and re￾gional levels. The most important change for the current ALPI process is a pilot effort that has 
shifted the focus to the country level. This change was made based on recommendations from 
the 2002 external evaluation and reflects an effort to adapt to member needs. The new focus is 
implemented at the country level through tripartite country teams. To be successful, all three 
groups in the ALPI process must take part in, and feel ownership of, ALPI activities on the 
ground. Only a shared ownership can further the other key components of the program. Over￾all, the changes made include: 
Increased country-level focus: In order to achieve concrete outcomes, ALPI is focusing its activi￾ties at the national level and in fewer countries. Countries are selected based on a number of 
criteria, including USAID presence, a commitment of all three-stakeholder groups to form and 
manage a tripartite country team, a track record of committed participation in previous ALPI 
activities, and the availability of a strong African organization with the necessary human and 
social capital to facilitate collaborative planning and joint action at the country level. 
The focus on the country level is implemented through the tripartite country teams. To be suc￾cessful, all three groups in the ALPI process must take part in, and feel ownership of, ALPI ac￾tivities on the ground. Only a shared ownership can further the other key components of the 
program, including the implementation of the tripartite partnership model of dialogue and 
joint action, the establishment of linkages between country processes and the ALPI Washing￾ton Week in the US, and between development delivery practice and policy formulation, and 
finally, ALPI’s approach of addressing issues that complement participating organizations’ own 
programmatic objectives at the country level. 
26 
Appendices 
Enhanced ownership by USAID, US PVOs, and African NGOs: ALPI partners — USAID missions, 
US PVOs, African NGOs — lead the process at the country level and participate in the design of 
the program, the decision–making process, implementation, and evaluation. They choose dis￾cussion themes and research topics and also select attendees to regional conferences in Wash￾ington and other advocacy meetings. 
Incentive Funds: One important lesson learned over the previous years is that good will to 
improve partnerships and enhance ownership of the ALPI process is, in and of itself, not 
enough. Stakeholders wishing to engage in ALPI in a systematic way have legitimate resource 
needs. Therefore ALPI has modified its program to contribute incentive and institutional ca￾pacity-strengthening funds to meet these needs. 
Added value through complementary strategies: The final external evaluation of the ALPI 
program in 2002 found that some participants felt ALPI events ran parallel to their own efforts 
in improving relationships. The current program addresses this concern by allowing the coun￾try level process of action plan formulation to select issues and activities of strategic 
(achievements that will improve the operational environment or add value to participants’ in￾dividual programmatic goals) and synergetic (part of ALPI planned activities that can be car￾ried out through participants’ day to day operational activities) relevance to participating or￾ganizations. 
Purpose of the Evaluation 
The purpose of the evaluation is to assess the extent to which: 1) activities carried out from 
2003 to the present have advanced ALPI’s strategic objective, and 2) the ALPI mechanism has 
proven suitable to addressing tripartite collaboration around the implementation of US assis￾tance to Africa. The evaluation will provide recommendations on the future of the ALPI mecha￾nism for: on-going consultations and information exchange among African NGOs, US PVOs, 
USAID, and other US bilateral development agencies; increased understanding about the ef￾fectiveness of collaborative approaches around African development; and improved develop￾ment relationships among the three actors in African development. 
Suggested Areas of Focus 
„ Structural Set Up/Mechanism/Actors.
„ The role of a country team secretariat in the ALPI process: pro-active leadership.
„ InterAction and the mobilization of the US PVO community (also look at linkages – influ￾ence/learning – between Africa-based operations and headquarters in Washington, DC).
Objectives of the Evaluation 
The objectives of the evaluation are to: 1) assess the extent to which ALPI has achieved its in￾termediate results (IRs), 2) highlight lessons learned, and 3) make recommendations about 
mechanism(s) to further enhance and build on the achievements of the ALPI process. 
Statement of Work 
The evaluation will be carried out via a combination of interactive/participatory learning ses￾sions with ALPI country teams, document review and interviews of key informants in the US 
and in Africa (face-to-face and/or phone, e-mail, or fax exchanges). These will include ALPI par￾ticipants from all three stakeholder groups and other external actors deemed relevant (such as 
GRAP in Ghana and MCA national programs in Ghana and Senegal). The evaluation will primar￾ily focus on Ghana and Senegal but will include viewpoints and feedback from Kenya and Mali 
to capture ALPI experiences in these countries. 
27 
Appendices 
For each of the intermediate results and outcomes, the evaluator will use ALPI’s current Per￾formance Monitoring, Evaluation, and Reporting plan as a resource to assist in adequately: 1) 
describing what was done and the process used, 2) identifying outcomes (anticipated and un￾anticipated), 3) analyzing the effectiveness of the process based on defined indicators, and 4) 
providing recommendations to further advance the goal of improved dialogue and develop￾ment relationships among USAID, US PVOs, and African NGOs. 
Evaluation Methods and Procedures 
The evaluator will be a senior development professional with significant prior experience in 
the implementation of PVO and NGO development programs in Africa, knowledge of InterAc￾tion and the ALPI program, and prior experience in conducting USAID evaluations. The evalua￾tor will work in collaboration with InterAction staff and the ALPI country team secretariats to 
identify potential key informants and plan and conduct interviews in each of the participating 
countries. In countries to be visited (Ghana and Senegal) the evaluator could leverage the as￾sistance of a development professional in-country to help in carrying out the work. The evalua￾tor will, however, be the sole responsible party for the design/choice of appropriate instru￾ments and methodologies to be used for this evaluation. 
The interviews should include but not be limited to: 
„ US-based stakeholders – USAID/Africa Bureau, InterAction staff, ALPI advisory committee 
members, and InterAction member agencies’ staff.
„ Africa-based stakeholders – USAID country missions, ALPI country team member agencies, 
other local NGO and US PVO country offices (to be recommended by country teams), and 
other development actors deemed critical.
„ A maximum of 40 days is authorized for this consultancy. The consultant will be paid for 
each day spent up to, and not to exceed, the 40 days. The consultation will begin in Sep￾tember 2006 and be completed by November 30th, 2006.
Tentative Evaluation Schedule: 
A. Activities in the United States 
1. Document review 
2. “Instruments” development 
3. Evaluation planning, including lessons learned conference in Ghana 
4. Contact and preparation of interviews 
5. US interviews 
6. Data collection and analysis 
7. Draft report 
8. Final report and presentation of findings 
B. Activities in Africa 
1. Contacts and preparation of interviews 
2. Travel to Ghana and Senegal 
3. Lessons Learned workshop 
4. Africa interviews (individual/group) 
5. Data collection and analysis 
28 
Appendices 
6. Planning and implementation of interviews in Kenya and Mali 
7. Report format 
The presentation of the final report should be guided by the basic outline: 
Executive Summary 
Introduction 
Evaluation Methodology 
Findings 
General findings 
Lessons learned 
Recommendations 
Future directions 
Conclusions 
Appendices 
Scope of Work 
Individuals and Organizations Contacted 
Reference Documents 
29 
Appendices 
APPENDIX 2: PERSONS INTERVIEWED 
GHANA 
Kofi Adu, GAPVOD, member, ALPI country team 
Lawrencia Adams, POSDEV, ALPI country team secretariat 
Kojo Ansah, CARE, member, ALPI country team 
Sharon Cromer, USAID Mission Director 
Ismail Lansah, Northern Ghana NGO network 
Ted Lawrence, USAID Democracy & Governance Officer, member, ALPI country team 
Letitia Ohene-Effah, OICI, member, ALPI country team 
Walter Pimpong, International Needs, ALPI Standards Committee 
Peter Subaab, Centre for Sustainable Development 
Clement Tandoh, USAID Democracy and Governance Team 
Albert Tenga, INPRODEC, NGO representative on MCC board 
KENYA 
Irene Gathinji, PACT, member, ALPI country team 
Felix Gichaga, Cooperative Bank 
Alice Kirambi, CPDA, ALPI country team secretariat 
Edgar Lumbasio, CPDA, ALPI country team secretariat 
Michael Oliewo, Chair, ALPI Task Force on Taxation 
Peter Omondo McOdida, International Medical Corps, member , ALPI country team 
Mark Rabudi, formerly KANCO and member, ALPI country team 
Steve Ragama, USAID Program Office, member, ALPI country team 
MALI 
Dembele Hawa Sow Cisse, CCA-ONG, ALPI country team secretariat 
Sheryl Cowan, Africare, member, ALPI country team 
Mamoutou Diabate, AMPRODE, member, ALPI country team 
Julie Fishcer, formerly Winrock and member, ALPI country team 
Allaye Kassambara, CCA-ONG, ALPI country team secretariat 
Dante Rokiatou N’Diaye, USAID Program Office, member, ALPI country team 
Lisa Nichols, ABT Associates, member of MCA technical team for PVOs 
Ely Simpara, AMPPF, member, ALPI country team 
Boureima Allaye Toure, OMAES, member, MCA technical team for NGOs 
SENEGAL 
Boubacar Aw, Millennium Challenge Corporation 
Lillian Baer, Africa Consultants International 
30 
Appendices 
Marietou Coulibaly, Syndicat Professionnel des Industries et des Mines du Sénégal 
Asane Diagne, CRS and member, ALPI country team 
Abdrahmane Diallo, USAID Program Office and member, ALPI country team 
Scott Dobberstein, formerly USAID mission 
Lisa Franchett, USAID Program Office Director 
Mazide N’Diaye, RADI 
Ousseynou Samb, Africare 
Boubacar Seck, CONGAD, ALPI country team secretariat 
Vore Seck, CONGAD 
WASHINGTON, DC 
InterAction 
James Bishop, Director, Humanitarian Policy and Practice, InterAction 
Sylvain Browa, Program Manager, ALPI, InterAction 
Kimberly Darter, Program Associate, ALPI, InterAction 
Ken Giunta, Director, Membership and Standards, InterAction 
Evariste Karangwa, Lutheran World Relief, formerly Program Manager, ALPI, InterAction 
Suzanne Kindervatter, Director, Commission on the Advancement of Women, InterAction 
Erin Tunney, Bread for the World, formerly, Public Policy & External Affairs, InterAction 
Cherri Waters, Senior Advisor on Development to the Interim President & CEO, InterAction 
John Zarafonetis, Congressional Hunger Center, formerly, Director, CDPP, InterAction 
 InterAction Members 
Margaret Goodman, World Learning, Program Advisory Group, CDPP
Laura Henderson, Christian Children’s Fund, Progam Advisory Group, CDPP 
Jeff Kwaterski, PACT 
Kevin Lowther, Africare, ALPI Advisory Committee 
 USAID 
Robert Groelsema, Associates in Rural Development, formerly CTO, ALPI for USAID/
Washington 
Tom Kennedy, Office of Private and Voluntary Cooperation 
Steve Pierce, Senior Advisor for Donor Affairs, Office of Development Planning, formerly 
with the Africa Bureau 
31 
Appendices 
APPENDIX 3: DOCUMENTS REVIEWED 
African Liaison Program Initiative Kenya Country Team (ALPI/KCT), “Work Plan for 2005/2006 
Ashman, Darcy, “Africa Liaison Project Initiative, 1999-2002, Final Evaluation Report”, January 
27, 2003 
Ashman, Darcy, “Africa Liaison Program Initiative (1999-2002) Final Evaluation Survey 
Equipe Pays ALPI, Senegal “Atelier des ONG sur l’Appropriation des Objectifs Strategiques de 
l’USAID et l’Acces a ses Resources”, 27 Juillet 2006 
Equipe Pays ALPI, Mali, “Plan d’Action 2005-2006” 
InterAction, ALPI E-bulletin: October, 2004 
InterAction, ALPI E-bulletin: May/June, 2005 
InterAction, ALPI, “The Africa Liaison Program Initiative…moving forward” (undated) 
InterAction, ALPI Partnership Principles (undated) 
InterAction, ALPI, “African Liaison Program Initiative (ALPI) Regional Conference on Lessons 
Learned, September 27-29, 2006” 
InterAction, ALPI, “Africa Liaison Program Initiative Lessons Learned Conference”, September, 
2006 (power point presentation) 
InterAction, ALPI, “Mutual Accountability in African Development Relationships. A Report of 
the ALPI Sub-Regional Conference”, December 2000 
InterAction, ALPI, “Partnerships in Practice, A Compendium”, 2004 
InterAction, ALPI “Scope of Work, Evaluation of the Africa Liaison Program Initiative (2003 – 
2006)” 
InterAction, ALPI, “The Africa Liaison Program Initiative Performance Monitoring, Evaluation, 
and Reporting Plan” (undated) 
InterAction, Committee on Development Policy and Practice, “Africa Liaison Project Initiative, 
October 1999-October, 2002, Proposal to USAID”, September 17, 1999 
InterAction, Committee on Development Policy and Practice, “Africa Liaison Project Initiative, 
Modification Proposal to USAID/AF”, September 9, 2003 
InterAction, “Enhancing the Millennium Challenge Account Implementation Process. Lessons 
from Madagascar” (undated) 
InterAction/FOVAD, “Toward Partnership in Africa/Vers le Partenariat en Afrique” (undated) 
InterAction, “Notes and Outcomes of the InterAction Board Retreat, Charting InterAction’s 
Strategic Directions, 2007 – 2009”, September 11-12, 2006 
InterAction, “Proposed InterAction Goals”, November 11, 2006 
32 
Appendices 

InterAction
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Washington, DC 20036
www.interaction.org