The Republic of Benin, together with Uganda and South Africa, is implementing the Twende Mbele (TM) programme which is a partnership between these three countries based on peer learning whose goal is to develop national evaluation systems that are able to improve governance and accountability to citizens. The gender responsiveness of these systems is one of the key areas of work for this programme around which the three countries have put in place a common learning system. Indeed, taking into account social realities and the specific needs of men and women is increasingly recognised as a condition for ensuring the relevance and effectiveness of public policies, it becomes important that national monitoring and evaluation systems be able to capture the differential impact of public interventions on men, women and the different components of society. Gender-responsive monitoring and evaluation systems have specific approaches, methods, processes and results that provide policymakers with the information they need to understand gender dynamics, in order to integrate them into the development of policies, plans, budgets and programs. In doing so, public actions will ideally be designed to effectively contribute to the achievement of gender equality as one of the Sustainable Development Goals. It is in this spirit that the Twende Mbele programme has embarked on a process of assessing the gender responsiveness of the monitoring and evaluation systems of the three countries with the aim of identifying the actions to be implemented for their improvement. An initial assessment was made in all three countries, but it was found that the studies in Benin and South Africa should be completed to better meet the expectations of the program.
