From 8 – 11 march, the Institute for Empirical Research in Political Economy (IREEP in French) participated in a learning workshop for all of the Eastern and Western African partners of the Think Tank Initiative in Nairobi, Kenya.

Twenty four (24) institutions from eleven countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda) were gathered with the objectives of:

• promoting as evaluative culture within institutions through a strategic approach to monitoring and evaluation;
• strengthen capacity in evaluative thinking in order to improve quality research and build stronger links between research and policy and  
• identify future learning activities and specify the assistance needed from TTI to strengthen organizational capacity.

The event was a mix of presentations from resource people on conceptual and theoretical aspects of monitoring and evaluation, group work and peer leaning.

The workshop offered a platform to the different research centers, including IREEP, to share experiences and elaborate on different approaches used to improve organizational performance, research quality and to interact with policy makers.

IREEP became a partner of the Think Tank Initiative in 2008.  It will be receiving for the next four years a grant from the Canadian International Development Research Center.