The first GMES & Africa (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security and Africa) Monitoring and Evaluation Technical Work Group Workshop took place from 19 to 21 February, 2019 in Tunis, Tunisia.

During the opening session, Dr Tidiane Outtara, Programme Coordinator of the GMES & Africa Support Program, welcomed the participants, who are the designated monitoring and evaluation (M&E) officers or focal staff from the twelve GMES & Africa Consortia. In his opening remark, Dr Outtara stated that monitoring and evaluation (M&E) plays a key role in the GMES & Africa support programme, and greatly contributes to the success of the programme.

The working group representative from the WeMAST consortium is Panduleni Hamukwaya, the WeMAST Project Manager.

The GMES and Africa Support Programme is a user-centric initiative that focuses on providing services for policymakers, scientists, businesses and the general public. Therefore, the underlying ‘service provision’ is at the core of the GMES and Africa programme implementation.

For every GMES and Africa consortium, developing a monitoring and evaluation framework will clarify what are the necessary pieces of information that will demonstrate the consortium’s story of change and success, in achieving their goals and objectives. In this regard, a common framework that guides the process of data collection, data collection frequency, data collection tools etc. has been put in place.