Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 4 June 2024 – As part of GEI’s Global Evaluation Week (gLOCAL), the Independent Evaluations Department of the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) Group hosted a webinar exploring the theme “Localizing Evaluation Practice: Promoting Accountability and Learning.”

The event, moderated by Brother Nur Abdi, served as a platform for sharing experiences and lessons learned on localizing evaluation and ways to effectively assess interventions and tailor them to local contexts to improve accountability and learning, with the goal of achieving greater impact. In his opening remarks, Ahmed Ag Aboubacrine, Acting Director of the Independent Evaluations Department at IsDB set the stage by demonstrating the transformative impact of localized evaluation practice tailored to the unique needs of member countries through concrete examples of initiatives championed by the Independent Evaluations Department. 

During this interactive event, 42 participants had the opportunity to listen to and engage with three speakers: Megan Grace Kennedy-Chouane, Head of the Evaluation Unit at the OECD; Dr. Aref Ben Abdallah, International Affairs Advisor at the public administration school ENAP Canada; and Dr. Ahmed Abdelgawad, Senior Evaluation Specialist at IsDB. The speakers discussed various topics including the importance of localizing evaluation of development projects, ways to support and promote localization, lessons learned, and best practices in the field. 

Several key takeaways were highlighted: Localized evaluations foster ownership by local stakeholders, increasing the likelihood of uptake of recommendations. Localizing evaluation requires that it be locally led and participatory.  Local ownership and involvement of local stakeholders are key drivers of all six success criteria: coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, impact, and sustainability.  An essential aspect of localization should be to build the capacities of local experts, empowering them to act as catalysts in their communities for continuous learning and improvement of development results.