Independent Evaluation of UNICEF Nigeria Training Investments
Final report
Highlights
This evaluation of UNICEF Nigeria’s training investments was commissioned by the UNICEF Nigeria’s country monitoring and evaluation unit to determine the extent to which individual training activities conducted by UNICEF in Nigeria have been relevant, effective, efficient and sustainable in supporting the implementation of the Country Programme Documents (CPD) 2014-2017.
This evaluation covers Investments by UNICEF Nigeria into ‘Individual Training Activities’ between January 2014 and May 2016 in the five CPD ‘sub-components’ (also called ‘sections’ or ‘sectors’) of Health, Nutrition, Education, Child Protection, and WASH.
The objectives of the evaluation are:
- To strengthen UNICEF Nigeria’s capacity development strategy with clear recommendation on how to improve future trainings and its implementation;
- To provide information on the quality of trainings provided by UNICEF: content, delivery, timeliness, felt need, etc.; and
- To contribute to knowledge management and organizational learning, by providing the evidence to support best practices on trainings.
The evaluation adopted mixed methods for the data collection and was conducted in six phases:
- Launch call (August 2016),
- Evaluability Assessment (September 2016)
- Inception mission to UNICEF Nigeria’s offices in Abuja and visits to six field offices to establish data sources (September 2016)
- Data collection in eight States in Nigeria (November 2016-January 2017)
- Data analysis and report writing (February-April 2017)
- Validation of findings and submission of final report (April 2017)
Evaluation findings were mixed in terms of relevance. Beyond the various notable efforts to meet the national training needs, UNICEF Nigeria’s Training Investments were not designed as a coherent programme and lack an explicit theory of change. In the absence of a national capacity gap analysis, trainings are scattered, which undermines relevance of the portfolio of training investments as a whole.
Also on relevance, UNICEF Nigeria’s individual training activities respond to a certain extent to the needs of participants with opportunities for some possible improvements. In that sense, surveyed training beneficiaries were overall satisfied with the training response to their needs and to their jobs. However, the current training needs identification and participant selection processes give no insurance as to how targeted its portfolio of trainings is in terms of selection of beneficiaries.
In terms of effectiveness, the evaluation the evaluation noted the absence of a comprehensive national training strategy where trainings are strategically planned to respond to national training needs. Also, the evaluation observed the absence of a robust results framework for its trainings, in order to assess whether trainings have been delivered properly, and to whom. In the absence of a country training strategy and results framework, the overall effects of the training portfolio’s impact are jeopardized and run the risk of dilution of potential results.
