Mid-term review of: the Environmental Cooperation Programme between Norway and South Africa 2005-2010

This report covers the mid-term review of the “Environmental Cooperation Programme between Norway and South Africa 2005-2010”. The paper contains a systematic review of the most significant aspects of the Programme. The aim of the paper is to give recommendations for further implementation as well as for continuation of the environmental cooperation efforts between the two countries.

The paper finds that:

• most projects have not formulated proper project design elements according to the prevalent modality used by the Norwegian Government in development cooperation
• the risk of staff turnover has materialised in the programme, hampering the progress in some projects
• the system of Theme Managers is not seen to be helpful to the programme
• different invoicing formats are used by the Norwegian partners; the lack of transparency in invoicing pose a potential risk
• in projects where the Norwegians are merely advisors, the dialogue has been strained, with some profound misunderstandings of the role of the Norwegian partner
• many of the programme documents have significant shortcomings
• the formal decision-making process of the annual meetings only once per year has partly hampered the continued progress of some efforts.

The paper makes the following recommendations:

• the document management should be improved, with proper nominations of the documents’ front pages and header/footer giving adequate information
• proper guidance must be given during planning of the new programme as regards contents of planning documents, invoicing and reporting
• Norwegian institutions to be included in the new programme must be able to deliver concrete outputs really needed by the South African side, and must clearly have comparative advantages internationally
• Norwegian funds should not pay staff salaries in South Africa.