Call for Papers: Impact Analysis for Evidence Based Policy Making in Africa

A regional conference on “Impact analysis for evidence policy-making: Practical experiences from Africa” will be held 11-13 October 2010 in Cotonou, Benin. It is organized by the Observatoire de Changement Social (OCS), which is which is attached to the Ministry of Strategic Planning, Development, Evaluation of Public Policies, and supported by Danish, German and Swiss Development Cooperation.


Objectives
The purpose of this conference is to create a platform for exchanging practical experiences with impact analysis and evidence-based policy making. How can analytical results be fed into policy making and enhance development effectiveness? The conference will be a learning event that pursues three specific objectives:

• To sensibilise key stakeholders from the political arena, public administration, private sector, researchers and consultancies as well as development partners for evidence-based policy making;
• To provide a platform for exchanging the lessons learnt from different initiatives and projects on the ground;
• To search for new partnerships and contacts for further exchange and possible collaboration, exchange and to establish synergies.

Topics
The forum will address methods and instruments for analysing economic and social impacts of development interventions. We are interested in contributions from practitioners (researchers, governmental institutions, representatives of civil society and development partners, etc), who have already commissioned and/or conducted impact analysis with the aim of informing decision-making and enabling mutual accountability. With this forum it is intended to share good examples and lessons learnt according to the four main themes:

A. Instruments for Impact Analyses
1. Which instruments and methods for impact analysis exist and what lessons can be derived from experiences? What have been their advantages disadvantages and opportunities?

B. Feeding in analytical results into the political decision-making process
2. Which success factors foster the uptake of analytical results by decision-makers (best practices and lessons learned)? How can ownership for impact analysis and its results be developed on the national level?
3. How do the instruments and approaches for ex-ante and ex-post impact analysis fit in the regular procedures and structures of governmental planning? How does the institutional framework need to be set up and how can institutional capacity be developed?

C. Participation and multi-stakeholder dialogues

4. What are good examples of participatory impact assessments and how do good multistakeholder dialogues look like?
5. What are the experiences of public administration cooperating with donors, research institutions
and NGOs?

D. Capacity Development
6. How can African countries develop and broaden effectively their capacity for impact analysis? Which areas need particular attention in terms of capacity development concerning the individual, organizational and the institutional level?
7. Which possibilities exist to address the capacity gaps? What can African governments do? What can development partners do?
8. How do we want to work together in the future to develop our capacities for impact analysis in Benin and in Africa?

Selection and Deadline
Contributions will be selected on the basis of abstracts (maximum 1000 words). Please email your submissions to the Observatory of Social Change ocsbenin@ymail.com and indicate “Forum sur l’Analyse d’Impact 2010” in the subject heading. Deadline for submission is 6 August 2010 and notification of acceptance will be sent out August 13th. For further information please refer to the Website of the Observatory of Social Change: www.ocs.bj.