Because of the increasing complexity of development coupled with the widening range of public, not-for-profit and private sector actors and the demand for more timely feedback has challenged the utility of conventional approaches to monitoring and evaluation in many development contexts.

As the result of this, Maarifa Consult has  specialized in areas that are hard to measure and where conventional program evaluation approaches are not always a good fit. Our innovative technologies in M&E offer better results than conventional methods and traditional evaluation methods.

We focus on

• Supporting organisations to develop practical, efficient M&E systems, approaches and tools which are integrated with innovative approaches.
• Building skills and knowledge of M&E practitioners and other development partners in ICT tools for Monitoring and Evaluation.
• Training your staff in mobile data collection platform.
• Choosing the right platform for your organisation.
• Designing survey tools and upload them on mobile devices.
• Setting up a local server that is suitable for your organization to store data.

Why the need to integrate ICT in M&E

Diagnosis. ICTs are being used to bring new voices and broader participation into program diagnosis and enable a wider range of input at a reduced cost. They are enabling evaluators to better manage and pull possible trends out of large data sets.

Planning. ICTs are being used to help achieve greater inclusion in planning processes. New technologies make it easier to compare and visualize data sets and to analyze data based on location so that resources can be better allocated. Data are also being aggregated more quickly and shared at various levels to improve participation in the planning process and to make better decisions.

Implementation and monitoring. ICTs are allowing for the collection of real-time data on participant experiences, behaviors and attitudes, meaning that analysis can be conducted early in the process and course corrections can be made to improve interventions and outcomes. Direct feedback from program participants is also being made possible through new ICTs, and it is assumed that this can help achieve greater transparency and accountability.

Reporting, sharing and learning. ICTs are enabling wider circulation of evaluative learning, interactive sharing, and greater public engagement with evaluation findings.