Country Program Evaluation (CPE) Consultant of UN Women Kenya Country Office Strategic Note 2022-2027

Background:

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

The Country Portfolio Evaluation (CPE) will assess the UN Women Kenya Country Office Strategic Note for the period 2022–2027. The Strategic Note is the primary planning tool guiding UN Women’s normative, coordination, and operational work in Kenya, aligned with the UN Women Global Strategic Plan, the UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) 2022–2026, and Kenya’s national development frameworks including Vision 2030. With a new Strategic Note due to be developed starting January 2027, this evaluation is commissioned to assess portfolio performance, document lessons learned and inform future programming.

The Strategic Note has an estimated total budget of USD 58.15 million and is implemented by a Country Office based in Nairobi. The portfolio addresses structural barriers to gender equality across governance and political participation, women’s economic empowerment, and the women, peace and security and humanitarian agenda. Kenya operates under a devolved governance system and faces persistent gender gaps despite a progressive constitutional framework, including low women’s political representation (23% in parliament), high informal sector employment, and recurring climate-induced humanitarian crises.

The evaluation will examine the relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, and integration of human rights and gender equality principles of the Strategic Note. The consultant will report to the Regional Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist , who will provide technical support in data analysis and interpretation.

Purpose, objectives and use of the evaluation

The UN Women Evaluation Policy and the UN Women Evaluation Strategic Plan 2022-25 are the main guiding documents that set forth the principles and organizational framework for evaluation planning, conduct and follow-up in UN Women. These principles are aligned with the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) Norms and Standards for Evaluation in the UN System and Ethical Guidelines.

The CPE has seven objectives:

• Assess the relevance of UN Women contribution to the intervention at national levels and alignment with international agreements and conventions on gender equality and women’s empowerment.
• Assess effectiveness, organizational efficiency and coherence in progressing towards the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment results as defined in the Strategic Note. 
• Enable the UN Women Country Office to improve its strategic positioning, including its programmatic design, partnership modalities and financing approach, to better support the achievement of sustained gender equality and women’s empowerment in a lower middle income country context.
• Analyze how human rights approach and gender equality principles are integrated in the design and implementation of the Strategic Note. 
• Identify and validate lessons learned, good practices and examples of innovation that can be scaled up and replicated to support gender equality and human rights.
• Provide insights into the extent to which the UN Women has realized synergies between its three mandates (normative, UN system coordination and operations).
• Provide actionable recommendations with respect to the development of the next Strategic Note.

The Country Portfolio Evaluation (CPE) is a systematic assessment to validate the contributions made by UN Women Country Office’s portfolio of interventions to development results with respect to Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment at the country level. It also assesses the Country Office’s organizational effectiveness and efficiency in delivering the planned results. It uses the Strategic Note (including the DRF and OEEF) as the main point of reference. 

Methodology:  Data collection and analysis 

The evaluation will employ a non-experimental, theory-based approach. The performance of the country portfolio will be assessed using contribution analysis, using the theory of change set out in the Strategic Note 2022-2027 as a basis