Grace Ashiru
After a three-day training session in Luanda, the African Development Bank (AfDB) launched its Remote Appraisal, Supervision, Monitoring, and Evaluation (RASME) project in Angola.
RASME is a set of real-time digital data-gathering tools and processes that allow the Bank, its clients, and development partners to better prepare projects and progress reports and evaluate impact transparently and openly.
Dra Rossana Silva, in charge of international economic cooperation at Angola’s Ministry of Finance, and Pietro Toigo, who is in charge of Angola for the African Development Bank Group, officially started the project.
This project has the potential to considerably improve data collecting, which we use to analyse the efficiency of our development efforts in Angola. “The fact that we are starting RASME with the Government of the Republic of Angola is significant,” said Toigo.
Together with the World Bank’s Geo-Enabling initiative for Monitoring and Supervision (GEMS) Team – Fragility, Conflict, and Violence (FCV) and the KoBoToolbox foundation, the AfDB’s Corporate IT department is putting RASME into place.
A statement says that RASME, already in use in 14 African countries, will make it easier to collect project-related data in hard-to-reach or remote areas, even those with security and logistics problems. This will make monitoring and evaluating the Bank’s development projects easier.
Our mission depends on making sure that our development projects are reported on openly and honestly. RASME is a big part of how we’ll be able to do this,” Silva said at the end.
In March of this year, the AfDB said it had gotten investment commitments for projects in Africa worth $32.8 billion. The investment will pay for projects in agriculture and food processing, education, energy and climate, health care, minerals and mining, and information and communications technology.
