MELIA Needs Assessment Results: Assessing the Evaluability of CGIAR’s 2025-30 Portfolio

CGIAR Independent Advisory and Evaluation Service. 2025. Assessing the Evaluability of CGIAR’s 2025-2030 Portfolio: Need Assessment Results. Rome: CGIAR Independent Advisory and Evaluation Service.

In preparing to assess the evaluability of CGIAR’s 2025-30 Portfolio, IAES surveyed colleagues of the Portfolio’s 13 Science Programs and Accelerators (SP/A’s) to identify specific needs and concerns towards the development of the Evaluability Assessment (EA) Terms of Reference (ToRs) and support during the Portfolio inception period. The survey was jointly designed and administered with the IAES Evaluation Function and CGIAR’s Project Coordination Unit (PCU), with the intent to support SP/A’s colleagues as they prepared their Inception Reports for submission to the Portfolio Performance Unit (PPU) by 2 June 2025.

The survey included 13 questions that are open- and closed-ended. The survey focused on respondents’ expectations about the EA and their desired output and outcome from the exercise. Respondents were asked to comment on short descriptions of each of the six domains of the EA Framework and identify key challenges within each, as related to the development of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) plans and MELIA activities in their SP/A. They ranked the domains according to perceived needs. These six domains are outlined and defined in Annex 1, and the survey questions are found in Annex 2.