By Tadiwa Shunje
MASVINGO – The 2026 National Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Week officially
opened in Masvingo at Urban Lifestyle Hotel on August 31, bringing together senior government
officials, evaluation experts, and other stakeholders to strengthen evidence-based governance and
improve national development outcomes.
The five-day programme, running from August 31 to September 4 at Urban Lifestyle Hotel,
provides a platform for stakeholders to assess the country’s monitoring and evaluation systems,
share experiences, and explore ways to ensure government programmes translate into measurable
results.
Delivering his welcome remarks, Permanent Secretary for Masvingo Provincial Affairs and
Devolution Dr Addmore Pazvakavambwa said monitoring, evaluation and learning were critical
to strengthening accountability and ensuring that development programmes achieved their
intended objectives.
He said Masvingo was honoured to host the national event under the Government’s new
provincial rotational framework, adding that the province had an important role to play in the
country’s development agenda. He highlighted developments in sectors such as agriculture and
mining, including efforts to promote value addition and beneficiation, and stressed that effective
monitoring and evaluation were necessary to ensure that such development initiatives produced
tangible benefits.
“Good governance dictates a simple truth: what gets measured gets done, what gets done gets
reported, and what gets reported gets improved,” said Dr Pazvakavambwa.
He urged stakeholders to strengthen data-driven feedback mechanisms and ensure that findings
from monitoring and evaluation processes were translated into improved public service delivery.
“Our task this week is clear: we must interrogate our frameworks, sharpen data-driven feedback
loops, and convert MEL insights into accountable service delivery,” he said.
Head of National Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Fananai Madambi said the presence of
international delegates at the MEL Week would allow Zimbabwe to draw lessons from other
countries and strengthen its own monitoring and evaluation systems. She said bringing together
local and international participants would create opportunities for knowledge-sharing and
exposure to different approaches to monitoring government programmes.
“We are not expecting local participants only, but international delegates as well. We want to tap
knowledge from international delegates as we want to improve our MEL systems,” Madambi
said.
She said the programme would also include visits to selected government projects, allowing
participants to move beyond theoretical discussions and gain a practical understanding of project
implementation and monitoring.
“We also want to be able to go and visit some of these projects as well so that we really
appreciate what we will be talking about when we speak of monitoring Government projects,”
she said.
Zimbabwe National INCE consultant Benjamin Mudiwa highlighted the need to strengthen these
systems while presenting findings from the 2026 National Evaluation Capacities Index Survey
Report for Zimbabwe. Mudiwa said the survey had identified both areas of progress and
significant gaps in Zimbabwe’s capacity to conduct and use evaluations for decision-making. He
said the country’s ability to generate reliable data remained a major concern, while limited
harmonisation of monitoring and evaluation systems was also affecting the effectiveness of
evaluation processes.
“There are still critical capacity gaps that we need to address, particularly around data generation
and the harmonisation of monitoring and evaluation systems, issues around the independence of
the monitoring and evaluation repository, and we do not yet have a central evaluation
repository,” Mudiwa said.
The survey also identified overreliance on donor funding as a critical challenge to the
sustainability of evaluation activities. “There is also an overreliance on donor funding, and this
raises questions about the sustainability of our evaluation capacity,” said Mudiwa.
The findings prompted calls for stronger domestic investment in monitoring and evaluation and
improved institutional systems for generating, storing and using evidence.
The official opening was followed by a march in Masvingo’s central business district, and the
MEL Week comes just days before Masvingo hosts the Sanganai/Hlanganani World Tourism
Expo, which runs from September 9 to 12, placing the province at the centre of major national
events.
