The road to results

Development evaluation is an exciting component of the larger evaluation mosaic. It addresses the profound, the complex, and the emergent areas of development. Evaluating poverty alleviation, globalization and its impacts
on the poor, the consequences of global warming on weak countries, the structural inequalities of the global financial systems, and strategies to help post conflict countries are but a few of the areas in which development evaluation is making contributions to our understanding of, indeed, our response to these pressing issues.
As pressures grow across the globe for accountability by governments and organizations for the consequences of their actions for greater responsiveness to internal and external stakeholders for their performance, and most profoundly for greater development effectiveness, evaluation is emerging as a key way in which to systematically address and answer the question, “So what?” It is not enough to document that one is busy, it is now a requirement to document that one is (or is not) effective.