- Resource mobilization
- Governance and public policy
- Strategic leadership and planning
- Information, communication & technology skills
- Organizational skills: Program/Project Management of large and complex teams and Strategic Plan development
- Conducting surveys: Evaluations, research, assessments and reviews
- Analytic & visualization skills (quantitative & qualitative) with- STATA, SPSS, Excel, QGIS, ODK, R, GIS, ODK, Qualtrics, google forms
- Team and interpersonal skills: Coaching, Mentoring and diversity & multi-cultural support supervision
- Presentation skills: Capacity Building and facilitating trainings
- Writing: Technical reports, Grants, proposals, success stories and stories of change
Kenya
Eddah Kanini (Board member: AfrEA, AGDEN & MEPAK
Monitoring, Evaluation and Gender Consultant/Trainer
Posted on 07/04/2025
In certain thematic areas, big projects are indeed effective at delivering effective solutions, particularly in emergency response, humanitarian aid, and large-scale infrastructure projects such as roads, railways, and major construction efforts.
However, in most other thematic areas, especially those relating to social development, big projects often struggle to achieve sustainable effectiveness. Examples include healthcare programs addressing Malaria, Tuberculosis (TB), and Universal Health Coverage (UHC), certain types of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) interventions, and Agriculture and food security initiatives. Despite their substantial financial resources, technical expertise, human resources, and capability to scale activities broadly, big projects frequently face challenges such as limited local context sensitivity, reduced community ownership, and difficulties in maintaining long-term sustainability.
In contrast, smaller projects implemented by local organizations, despite having fewer resources and a limited operational scope, demonstrate a notable advantage. They tend to be highly responsive to immediate community needs, deeply anchored in local knowledge and cultural practices, and foster strong community ownership and relevance. These small-scale projects possess an inherent flexibility and agility that allow rapid adjustments based on direct feedback from community members, significantly enhancing their overall sustainability and effectiveness in addressing complex and evolving social issues.
Therefore, while big projects play a crucial role in specific contexts, the complementary strengths of smaller, locally driven initiatives are indispensable for achieving sustainable solutions in the complex social domains of development.
Kenya
Eddah Kanini (Board member: AfrEA, AGDEN & MEPAK
Monitoring, Evaluation and Gender Consultant/Trainer
Posted on 09/05/2025
While my evaluation experience cannot be formally labelled as SSTC, I have assessed several multi-country and regional initiatives which have the same principles of SSTC, such as the peer learning, mutual accountability, and capacity exchange between countries in the Global South. Notably, I participated in an evaluation of a regional health systems strengthening program that involved technical cooperation between various countries where they shared innovations in health models, data use for decision-making, and integrated service delivery. Although the cooperation was organically South-South in nature, the absence of an SSTC-specific evaluation framework made it hard to fully capture the unique dimensions of reciprocal learning and ownership.
With no SSTC-specific guidance, several challenges are faced for example becoming difficult to articulate what success looks like for SSTC, especially when value lies more in process and relationships. You realise what comes out is more of the outputs. It also seems that SSTC successes have not been documented largely, probably due to limited tracking of the process. In this context, Narrative and story-based methods come in handy to be able to capture the mutual benefit and capacity exchange. Therefore, the qualitative methods such as outcome harvesting, storytelling, and appreciative inquiry are very relevant in evaluating SSTC.
Evaluators can contribute to a more impactful use of SSTC through the Co-creation of frameworks with partners to ensure they reflect Southern values and definitions of success. Documentation and dissemination of different learning of the successful processes and what success looked like, the how and why. Evaluators can also contribute through intentionally embedding equity and inclusion lenses as well as integrating the systems thinking when evaluating SSTC.