The final evaluation of the EU-funded “Quality Standards and Compliance Programme for the United Republic of Tanzania” (QUALITAN), implemented by UNIDO under the wider Business Environment, Growth and Innovation (BEGIN) programme aimed to increase MSME compliance with quality standards in order to widen market access, reduce standards compliance costs and enhance consumer protection.
The evaluation has a twofold objective: first, to provide the European Union and interested stakeholders with an independent assessment of QUALITAN’s performance, including the results achieved at different levels and the factors explaining those results; and second, to identify lessons learned, conclusions and recommendations to inform current and future interventions.
More specifically, the evaluation will assess progress against the project’s original objectives and expected results; examine the sustainability of benefits; assess the contribution and effectiveness of stakeholders and governance structures; and identify the major constraints faced during implementation.
The evaluation covers the full QUALITAN implementation period, from 1 January 2022 to 24 July 2025.
While QUALITAN is part of BEGIN, the evaluation focuses on the QUALITAN component only. It will consider links with BEGIN, the Blueprint reform agenda and Tanzania’s wider quality infrastructure system only where these are relevant to QUALITAN’s performance, coherence, sustainability and EU added value.
The evaluation will use a theory-based, mixed-methods approach structured around the OECD-DAC criteria, EU added value, the reconstructed Theory of Change and the Evaluation Matrix. The approach is designed not only to assess what was achieved, but also to explain why results varied across components and how QUALITAN contributed to observed changes.
The main analytical approach will be contribution analysis, testing the plausibility of QUALITAN’s intervention logic and assessing whether the project contributed to results in areas such as conformity assessment capacity, standardisation, MSME outreach, digitalisation, governance and communication.
The evaluation will assess QUALITAN against the following main areas: relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, perspective of impact and EU added value. It will also integrate cross-cutting issues, including gender equality, youth, disability, Leave No One Behind, human rights-based approaches, environment and climate considerations, and contributions to SDG 8 and SDG 9.