Africa Health Systems Initiative Support to African Research Partnerships (AHSI-RES) Summative Evaluation

Canada, Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia

Health Policy and Governance; Policy, Governance, System; Health Policy / Policy Dialogue / Governance / Legal framework

The African Research Partnership (AHSI-RES) was a six-year programme to fund research (2008-2014), co-funded by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development DFATD (formerly CIDA), and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) under the Global Health Research Initiative (GHRI). AHSI-RES was a 5.9 million dollar programme with the main objective of generating policy-relevant knowledge that would have helped strengthening health systems in selected sub-Saharan countries (Mali, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi and Zambia). The research themes were human resources for health (HRH) and health information systems (HIS) with special attention to equity considerations. The main objective was to ensure translating relevant research results into policy. The research themes were human resources for health (HRH) and health information systems (HIS) with equity / access as transversal theme.

The formative evaluation aimed at informing GHRI and AHSI RES program staff about the AHSI RES programme performance and progress, with a view to inform the last year of implementation and the development of a project proposal for a new programme. The evaluation approach combined desk review of documents and telephone interviews with research teams, CIDA country-based and headquarter staff as well as AHSI RES program staff. The End of Programme Summative Evaluation consisted in conducting a summative AHSI-RES programme evaluation of the achievement of the expected outcomes/outputs as defined in the Logic Model (LM) and Performance Measurement Framework (PMF) of the AHSI-RES program. This evaluation reported on the project’s performance (effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, and cross-cutting themes). It also evaluated the achievements of the research projects in promoting partnership for health policy among decision makers and research institutions, partnership between African researchers, and partnership between African and Canadian research institutions, as well as the integration of equity and gender as cross­cutting issues in the research objectives and findings, and generated a list of lessons learned from the implementation of AHSI-RES, and formulated recommendations for future support of health systems research in Africa.