Annual review of DFID strengthening South Africa's Revitalised Response to AIDS and HIV (SARRAH) programme

Abstract

This is the report of the first annual review of the SARRAH Programme. This internal review was conducted under the overall guidance of Bob Fryatt and Hilary Nkulu of DFID, with the field work, analysis and report drafting being conducted by Charles Wright of Coffey International Development and John Seager of the Human Sciences Research Council South Africa. The fieldwork was conducted between 23 May 2011 and 10 June 2010. The main purpose of this report is to review the progress of the programme against the goal, purpose and outputs set out in the programme logframe and documentation. In addition, the TOR (Annex 6) stipulate a further 12 issues to be reviewed covering various elements of programme governance and management, engagement with programme partners, impacts, challenges, and aspects of value for money. The report also makes recommendations where appropriate and draws out lessons learned for the remainder of the programme. The review is informed by a desk review of relevant documents (Annex 1) and semi-structured interviews with DFID staff, partners within the NDoH, SANAC and TAC, and the Service Provider HLSP (Annex 3). These interviews were followed by an inspection of evidence needed to validate progress made (Annex 5). The review findings, conclusions and recommendations were presented to and considered by DFID and HLSP on the 9 June 2011. Thereafter we updated the presentation. These slides form an integral part of our findings, as well as our 'scoring' of the programme outputs and workstreams (Annex 2). The slides (including attendee comments provided as PowerPoint 'Notes') represent the systematic record of workstream progress and performance. A bibliography of documents reviewed is provided in Annex 4. The penultimate stage of the assignment was the review of the 'self evaluation' of the programme's performance by HLSP, and the completion of the assignment team's (including DFID) independent evaluation, using the Aries Annual Review Excel Template. In using the tool, the review team opted to 'score' each of the individual workstreams against their respective 'milestones' and then used these scores to inform the overall score attributed to the output. The final stage of the assignment was the drafting of this assignment report, and its subsequent finalisation. We start this analysis with the overall context of the assignment, and some of the challenges faced. We then set out the overall findings and conclusions that have emerged, before addressing the specific issues mentioned in the TOR. Note that all recommendations made in the text are summarised in tabular form at the end of the report, including the institution responsible for follow up and due date.