The evaluation of the country strategic plan (CSP) for Madagascar for 2019-2023 was conducted between April 2022 and April 2023 and covered WFP’s strategy, interventions and systems for the period between 2018 and September 2022. Taking a utilization-focused, consultative approach, the evaluation served the dual purpose of accountability and learning and informed the preparation of the next country strategic plan. The evaluation assessed WFP’s strategic positioning, its contribution to outcomes, the efficiency of implementation and the factors explaining WFP’s performance.
The CSP marked a change from operation- and programme-based planning to country-level strategic planning, aiming at facilitating integration among sectors, focus areas and long-term objectives.
WFP made major efforts to draw on existing evidence to guide its programs, although geographic prioritization of certain activities could be expanded beyond the Southern regions. Government strategies and the WFP portfolio are aligned on paper, and there are promising agreements between WFP and its state partners, while links with local partners are also developing. On the other hand, opportunities exist to explore and strengthen partnership with UN agencies, including joint programming.
WFP has demonstrated flexibility and adaptability in continuing to deliver on the first part of its 'saving lives/changing lives' mandate - in the face of repeated shocks in the country. It managed to achieve significant results particularly under the strategic outcomes focussing on school feeding and some capacity strengthening. The CSP does not appear to function as an integrated program to date, and this gap is most apparent in the resilience area.
Overall, WFP has paid attention to cross-cutting objectives and has applied innovative tools to achieve some of them, but there is still plenty of room for improvement and further integration of specific themes such as emergency preparedness, accountability to affected populations and climate change. More efforts are deemed necessary for the WFP approach to facilitate strategic links across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, and there is insufficient reflection and study of the impacts of WFP's crisis response on the development actions that should follow them.
Among main factors affecting performance, WFP has been more successful in attracting funds for crisis response than for resilience-building activities, which is partly explained by its reputation as a humanitarian actor among donors. Improved monitoring of activities has enabled WFP programs and implementing partners to have a clear picture of program progress, and to take corrective action where necessary. WFP's partnerships have potential and are constantly improving, but persistent cooperation and coordination problems have affected results. Understaffing issues emerged, including in relation to lack of profiles and skills geared to longer-term or development activities.
The evaluation made five recommendations focussing on WFP emergency preparedness, advocacy, evidence generation around resilience, staff training, and integration.