South Africa Vulnerability Assessment Committee

6.5 General Public

Participation of the general public in this implementation plan is very important because all the interventions and programs proposed in this plan are implemented at their level. The community needs to be involved at all levels of program, intervention and project implementation. There is a need of a community buy in and ownership of programs and intervention to improve reliability and sustainability.

Figure : Proposed Institutional Arrangement and Information Flow

7. MONITORING AND EVALUATION MECHANISMS

Food and nutrition security information is a necessary element of Food and Nutrition Security Policy because it helps in decision making, monitoring and evaluation of programs and interventions. In South Africa, there are several food security and nutrition related information systems currently being used by sectors and stakeholders without proper coordination.

This information include statistics in agriculture, health, nutrition, meteorology, demography, income and expenditure, population, macroeconomic indicators, market and price, institutional arrangement, natural and environmental resources. Monitoring and evaluation of Food and Nutrition Security implementation plan will assist policy makers and various program implementers to assess progress towards established goals and outcomes. It will require comprehensive appraisal, coordinated and harmonised analysis that looks at the medium and long term impacts of a policy and exposes areas which worked, not worked and issues which should be done differently in future implementation.

Monitoring and evaluation of implementation plan of Food and Nutrition Policy requires participation of all stakeholders including local communities, government departments, donor partners, civil societies, local governments, non-governmental organisations and community based organisations. The processes of monitoring and evaluation envisaged in this plan require periodic assessments of poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition status over the implementation period. Community based monitoring and evaluation would therefore be crucial in the implementation of activities. This role will be conducted using existing structures of government departments, implementation partners, research institutions and external consultants to assess if the policy plan, goal and outcomes are met according to expected deliverables over time. Given this background the following monitoring and evaluation arrangements shall be put in place to assess the progress at output and outcome levels:

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  Baseline survey shall be conducted at the commencement of the implementation of policy to establish and verify the status quo. The baseline survey should be contracted out to institutions with adequate skills and experience;
  
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  Output and outcome indicators will be finalised at stakeholder workshops to be convened by the Inter-governmental working group as the working secretariat for the implementation plan;
  
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  Development of Food and nutrition security policy Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation mechanism, consisting of evidence–based monitoring and evaluation system to track inputs, processes, outputs and outcomes of the implementation process.
  
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  The key monitoring and evaluation reports shall include the following:
  

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  Monthly progress reports to be presented in monthly meetings;
  
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  Quarterly progress reports to be presented in quarterly meetings;
  
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  Annual progress reports to be presented in annual meetings; and
  
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  Midterm and end of program evaluations for specific programmes and projects.
  

8. IMPLEMENTATION PLAN FINANCE AND BUSINESS MODEL

Table 2: Food and Nutrition Security Policy Implementation Plan Prioritized Outcomes, Targets, Outputs and Activities