Independent Magazine - Issue n.5, 2023

IOE recently explored opportunities for academic outreach at the Seoul National University, in South Korea. This, through a seminar held by Mikal Khan, IOE Evaluation Officer, at the Center for International Development Evaluation (CIDE) of the University’s Graduate School of Public Administration, on 16 December 2022.

The title of the seminar was ‘Introduction to the Independent Office of Evaluation of the International Fund for Agricultural Development: Governance and Evaluation methods. In his presentation, Mr Khan outlined IOE’s guiding policy and principles, the safeguards of the Office’s independence, its objective and evaluation products. The event also addressed IOE’s methodologies for evaluation, with a focus on IOE’s new Evaluation Manual, the Office’s most used investigative methods and data collection tools.

The event also allowed for discussions on interesting evaluation methods that CIDE is pursuing and applying. CIDE strives to improve the evaluation capacity of national and international organizations as well as of recipient countries through various education and training programmes. At the same time, CIDE aims to provide practical assistance to national and international organizations by scientifically measuring the impact of the development programmes, and provide evaluation feedback that can be reflected in for the future programmes.

CIDE is a research centre specialized in international development sector evaluation launched at Seoul National University in March 2014. The centre’s mission is to make contributions in improving the development programmes of recipient countries and donor agencies by assessing aid effectiveness with rigorous evaluation methods in accord with international standards.