For the past 30 years, Egypt has received, and continues to receive, much international development assistance from many development partners. How well-used has this assistance been is a key question. One way to assess its impact is to relate its magnitude to national income and other economic variables. Another is to examine conditions and actual allocations, and how compatible these are with development priorities.

Important as these approaches are, they need to be supplemented with an evaluation of the impact of individual projects/programmes in achieving specific development goals. These goals include alleviating poverty in given localities, improving family health standards and practices in rural areas, developing specialized skills for industry, and so on.

To provide Egyptian-based evaluations, the Minister of International Co-operation, H.E. Fayza Aboul Naga, launched the Centre for Project Evaluation & Macroeconomic Analysis (PEMA) in January 2003. PEMA conducts evaluation work as an autonomous agency and applies international standards and approaches. PEMA focuses primarily on impact evaluations. They are performed some time after the termination of a fund to a project. The decision to focus on impact evaluations was prompted by the fact that this type of evaluation- despite its critical importance- is often not done. Both development partners and projects hosts typically rely on terminal evaluation. This is the type of evaluation that is done towards the end of a project, as a more or less adequate means of assessing project success or failure. But this alone is not enough.

PEMA also supports decisions in the area of international cooperation and development by the preparation of select studies and policy briefs. The target is not to conduct abstract academic research. It is rather to present decision-makers with insights and advice on emerging issues and challenges, where development partners could play a positive role and where government intervention could be required. Finally, PEMA contributes to the Ministry’s efforts to coordinate and harmonize international assistance in order to maximize Egypt’s benefits.

In order for PEMA to pursue its efforts towards the achievement of its mandate, and to increase its ability to undertake more project evaluations and research assignments, the best and most qualified calibres are selected to join PEMA’s team. Adequate capacity building opportunities are made available to PEMA’s team members.