Anthropological perspectives on the challenges to monitoring and evaluating HIV and AIDS programming in Lesotho

Abstract

This article focuses on how numerous international nongovernmental organisations (INGOs) have stepped forward to provide services related to HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment in Lesotho. We highlight some widely recognised challenges associated with the INGO approach and describe how people working in that sector in Lesotho experience similar challenges, focusing especially on weak or inadequate monitoring and evaluation (M&E). Partially in response to such weaknesses, Lesotho is implementing its ‘Partnership Framework to Support Implementation of the Lesotho National HIV and AIDS Response.’ A major goal for this initiative is to strengthen procedures and methods for M&E. Through examination of a partnership that the authors are cultivating with Catholic Relief Services in Lesotho, we discuss some ways that anthropologists can contribute to formulating M&E processes and procedures that can provide sound measures of outcomes and have the potential to inform programme development.

Keywords: aid agencies; civil society organisations; development; financing; INGOs; multisectoral collaboration; NGOs; programme evaluation; southern Africa

African Journal of AIDS Research 2009, 8(4): 473–480