Of 29 ethiopia social accountability program (esap2) midterm review (mtr) final report

 
3. Implementation on the ground is starting to generate results. By the end of March 2014, ESAP2 
was being implemented by 49 Social Accountability Implementing Partners (SAIPs) in 223 woredas 
spread across all regions of Ethiopia and directly reaching over 71,000 citizens in terms of 
sensitization on their entitlement and responsibilities to plan and monitor basic services with indirect 
benefits to several of the rest of the citizenry in participating woredas. Similar achievements have 
been attained with respect to the citizens supported to make their own choices and hold decision 
1
This report is a deliverable of the MTR field mission that was conducted from April 14 through 19 2014. Additional work was done during 
April 28 through May 2. The report was done by the World Bank team with inputs from ESAP2 Management Agency, MoFED focal points for 
ESAP2 and donors. The World Bank team included Alex Kamurase (Task Team Leader/Sr. Social Protection Specialist), Mesfin Temesgen 
(Social Protection Specialist), Shomikho Raha (Social Development Specialist), Abiy Belay (Sr, Financial Management Specialist), Binyam 
Bedelu (Sr. Procurement Specialist) and Sofia Said (Program Assistant). The mission team worked closely and consulted with Yoseph Abdissa 
(Sr. Social Protection Specialist), Laura Campbell (Social Protection Specialist), Salman Alibhai (Impact Evaluation Specialist), Colin Andrews 
(Sr. Social Protection Specialist/Acting Coordinator PBS Secretariat) and received guidance from Qaiser Khan (HD Sector Leader and PBS 
TTL).

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makers accountable for services, and citizens groups, local government officials and service providers 
trained on social accountability (SA). Application of SA tools which experienced challenges in taking 
off initially has now gained momentum and 36% of all woredas covered by ESAP2 had completed 
woreda level interface meetings and elaborated joint service improvement action plans. The woredas 
and the citizenry are implementing those service improvement action plans at different progress 
levels. Expressed in terms of the 142 woredas covered by the 1
st
cohort SAIPs (since the second 
cohort had been implementing for only 6 months by end of March), over 56% woredas have 
completed interface meetings and elaborated joint service improvement action plans. Although the 
overall rate of 36% is less than 50% at MTR, the mission team was optimistic that faster progress will 
be attained over the next year given that implementers have now become more familiar with the 
processes and tools based on lessons learned so far.