Introduction

Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) are critical components in moving towards evidence-based policy making and decision making, serving as tools for feedback, accountability, learning, and enhancing productivity and innovation. The evaluation process includes continuous measurement of progress towards achieving goals and periodic evaluation of the effectiveness of programmes in terms of the targeted goals. This helps organisations use the data and results in internal learning and make decisions to modify and improve programmes and enhance overall performance. Feedback through evaluation of programmes helps organisations correct current errors and improve future decisions. The results-based evaluation system is a feedback system (Gorgens and Kusek, 2010), without neglecting any programme or system inputs.

Accountability is linked to auditing, compliance, and performance management through oversight (Cook, 2006). It includes acknowledgement and willingness to take responsibility for actions, decisions, policies, and the expectation of recognition (Owuori et al, 2022). M&E for accountability usually focuses on accountability to governments, organisations, and funders through a steadfast commitment that the planned work was carried out to the agreed standards or achieved results according to the intended plans and objectives.

In the same context, learning is one of the core objectives of evaluation along with accountability, so there is a tendency to focus on M&E as a tool for learning and improvement rather than accountability. Learning is done through reflection on data and results from evaluation and is intentionally used for continuous improvement, increasing the organisation's ability to achieve the intended results.