ARCHIPELAGO is an inclusive economic development programme, that started in January 2019 with an expected end in January 2023, addressing youth and vulnerable groups’ employability through increasing their professional skills as well as enhancing employment opportunities. Specifically, ARCHIPELAGO aims at strengthening the private sector involvement in TVET in the partner countries and increasing local employment opportunities and employability by developing local training and vocational resources adapted to private sector needs.
The philosophy of the ARCHIPELAGO programme is based on the mobilisation and involvement of African and European private sector organizations in vocational training projects that directly improve employability and address the economic causes of migration. This approach based on African-European institutional partnerships will ensure ownership of projects and guarantee better sustainability of results. The activities of the specific partnership projects take place in Africa and the countries covered by the ARCHIPELAGO projects are Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal.
The specific objectives of the mid-term evaluation that will be carried out by TiEG team of experts are i) to assess the implementation of the ARCHIPELAGO programme as a whole, focussing on the management of the calls for proposals and the implementation of transversal activities, and ii) to evaluate selected sub-grant projects.
The evaluation will assess the Action using the six standard DAC evaluation criteria, namely: relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability and early signs of impact. In addition, the evaluation will assess a specific the EU added value (the extent to which the Action brings additional benefits to what would have resulted from Member States’ interventions only).
The evaluation starts in October 2021 and will be completed in April 2022.