Investigating the monitoring and evaluation process of HIV/AIDS programmes by non-governmental organizations in KwaZulu-Natal province

Abstract

In South Africa, HIV/AIDS takes the lead, and this is a serious health concern. Being a country that is mostly affected by this epidemic, various stakeholders such as international organizations, Non-governmental organizations, private organizations and government organizations have come up with a collaborative effort to manage the epidemic. Through various interventions, it has been noted that monitoring and evaluation of HIV/AIDS remains underdeveloped. The purpose of this study was to investigate the monitoring and evaluation process implemented on HIV/AIDS programmes by the Non- Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in a specific municipality in KwaZulu-Natal province. A quantitative, explorative and descriptive design was used. A self-developed questionnaire was used as data collection instrument. Data was collected from November 2017 to March 2018. Seventeen (17) NGOs and a total of 83 respondents who met the inclusion criteria participated to the study. The results revealed that the NGOs in this specific municipality had some inconsistency in implementing and delivering M&E process on the HIV/AIDS programme. The results of the study indicated that the challenges and issues identified by the respondents affected the way they monitored and evaluated the projects they implemented. It was recommended that through training of staff to acquire skills for designing monitoring and evaluation plan for all projects and development of comprehensive M&E plan document that detailed the programme’s objectives, developed the interventions to achieve these objectives, the NGOs in this specific municipality will be able to improve their current monitoring and evaluation process implementing on HIV/AIDS management programme. The need for communication between programme planners and various funders on how to put in place a structured M&E plan for all the projects to be implemented in future and adequate resources to implement M&E processes and functions were highly recommended.