Overview
This is the final external evaluation report of the project “Strengthening the capacity of the Economic Community for Central African Member States to enhance domestic production linkages from the mineral resources sector”. The overall objective of the project was to strengthen the capacity of policy makers, technical specialists and national institutions in the Economic Community of Central Africa States (ECCAS) countries to enhance domestic production linkages from the mineral resources sector. The project started at the end of 2015 and ended in December 2017 and was managed by UNCTAD’s Special Unit on Commodities (SUC). Three ECCAS countries (Chad, Congo and Equatorial Guinea) were initially selected as beneficiaries due to their high dependency on minerals. However, only Chad and Congo participated in the project despite repeated efforts by the project management to include Equatorial Guinea. Due to lack of response from the country, UNCTAD instead implemented additional activities at the regional level to expand the impact of the project to other ECCAS countries. This independent evaluation was carried out between February and June 2018. The evaluation consisted of a desk review (21 documents were consulted) followed by field interviews in UNCTAD Office Geneva (22 -23 Feb 2017) with the Project Management Team. Skype and telephone interviews were organised with project participants.