Developing a pool of external evaluators for Korea’s loan operations

Challenge

Quality evaluation requires the right mix of technical skills and sector-specific knowledge. Compared to other government agencies that manage grants, the Export-Import Bank of Korea (KEXIM) has historically had more difficulty finding qualified external evaluators for EDCF loan operations. The major bottleneck has been evaluators’ lack of knowledge about loan operations and their potential development outcomes.

Approach

To address this challenge sustainably, in 2023, KEXIM decided to improve the evaluation ecosystem through a training programme for evaluators. KEXIM had an idea of what the content should look like but did not have specific experience in developing such a curriculum, so it collaborated with the Graduate School of International Studies at Ewha Women’s University to develop a pilot, with courses in evaluation design and management offered by faculty members who had knowledge and experience conducting EDCF evaluations.

• The curriculum drew on experience from KOICA’s association with the Korea Society for International Development and Cooperation. Integrating the programme into a course at the graduate school allowed for more in-depth training as well as practical experience conducting an evaluation at a project site as part of the coursework. An evaluation of the pilot course is currently under way.

Results

• Applying coursework to conduct evaluations. In 2023, 17 students finished the coursework for this course and three students participated in a study trip to Viet Nam to do an actual ex post evaluation of a loan-financed road project. An added benefit is that the pilot course allowed foreign students – some of whom are government officials from partner countries – to gain greater awareness of Korea’s ODA projects internationally.

• Collaboration with academia boosted evaluation capacities. KEXIM benefited from the graduate school’s holistic approach to development and its focus on cross-cutting issues (environment, gender, targeting vulnerable groups, etc.). Together with more technical infrastructure expertise of KEXIM, these courses will continue to add depth to the evaluation of ODA and improve evaluation quality over time.

• Focused development of a pool of experts can expand the development co-operation ecosystem in Korea. A growing corps of independent external evaluators increases the pool of development co-operation experts working outside of government, which is important for accountability and learning, especially as ODA scales-up.

• Programme expansion. Other universities and research institutes have expressed interest in establishing similar evaluation courses and KEXIM is considering gradually expanding the number of participating schools in the future.