Study on application of Adaptive Management (AM) in EOL project implementation in the Horn, Eastern and Southern Africa (HESA)

This study aimed at assessing EOL grantees’ understanding of adaptive management in programming as a risk mitigation strategy, its application to improve project implementation strategies and whether it has provided opportunities for learning and make recommendations on how application of adaptive management can be improved in implementation of the EOL project. The target group comprised of EOL grantees who have implemented any of three Operational Components of Education Out Loud (EOL) program in the past three years (2020- 2022) as well as the HESA RMU. In addition, other stakeholders such as representatives from the Regional Independent Selection Panel (RISP), Global Independent Selection Panel (GISP), GMU and one of the learning partners participated in the study. We used qualitative and quantitative tools, beginning with a more comprehensive desk review of grantees’ projects documents of the selected sample of 11 grantees under OC1 out of 19, one grantee under OC2 (there is only one), and 2 grantees out of 5 under OC3. In addition to representatives from the Regional Independent Selection Panel (RISP) and the Global Independent Selection Panel (GISP), GMU, HESA RMU, and one learning partner - followed by an in-depth survey of the selected grantees in all targeted countries assessing their level of understanding of practices of adaptive management and assessing their ability to implement it on the ground