Participatory Impact Assessment as a Tool for Change: Lessons from Recent Experience in Poverty Alleviation Projects in Africa

This document is a conference paper that was presented at a Panel Session on PIA (participatory impact assessment) in Vancouver. The paper focuses on an attempt to use a participatory impact assessment process to foster village level capacity building in poverty alleviation programmes. The paper concentrates on the process by which an evaluation exercise was used as an integral part of the development intervention activity whilst fulfilling the primary objective of assessing impacts. The paper describes the background of the programme which was being evaluated, describes the divergent aims of the evaluation and examines the extent to which the participatory methodology adopted influenced the programme in question. Finally, the paper analyses the wider implications of this approach to evaluation, both for the specific project and the broader network of promoters, implementors and beneficiaries of a more transparent process of development interventions in general.