The Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEAL) Community of Practice (CoP) met on 3-4 March at the ILRI Campus in Nairobi to share experiences, skills and lessons in monitoring and evaluation, and to identify ways of tackling challenges.

This CoP meeting was held under the umbrella of the Africa-wide Sweetpotato for Profit and Health Initiative (SPHI). SPHI is a 10-year initiative led by the International Potato Centre (CIP), and it is expected to improve the lives of 10 million households by 2020 in 17 target countries. Launched in 2009, the project had already reached over 1 million households by the end of December 2014. One of the key intervention areas is improving the sweetpotato value chain by researching and implementing actions that will remove bottlenecks related to processing, marketing and utilization of sweetpotato products. The overall objective continues to be to develop the essential capacities, products, and methods to reposition sweetpotato in food economies to alleviate poverty and under-nutrition in Africa.

During the different sessions, presentations and discussions aimed at sharing experiences in the way Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is done in different countries, organizations and projects that deal with sweetpotato. Presentations were also made on tools used by different countries and organizations to capture and analyze M&E data and their strengths and weaknesses. Methods for computing indicators of progress required by the projects and donors were discussed and illustrated. At the end of the meeting, participants made proposals and suggested action points to drive the MEAL CoP into the future.