The principal objectives of the evaluation were to present the following to the concerned departments of the EU’s international cooperation, to the partner government and, if need be, to the general public:

• a global, totally independent assessment of the results of the intervention (1st phase of the project Rehabilitation of basic social services and reinforcement of local authorities’ capacities in the poles of development (PDD)) by putting a special focus on the results of the project in relation to its objectives;
• the principal lessons learnt of the intervention as well as recommendations in order to improve the measures in place and future actions.

Being the mid-term evaluation, its principal objective was related to the weak performance of the implementation of the Project less than a year before the expiry of the contract, which had already been extended to D+7. It seemed to be crucial to identify the underlying causes for that in an independent and detailed way, which allowed the evaluator to propose short-term correcting solutions in order to finalize or reorient the foreseen activities in an appropriate way, to strengthen the achievement of the results and to limit decommitments upon expiry of the convention.