NACCAP mid-term review
29 oktober 2009
Early 2009 an external mid-term review (MTR) for NACCAP was conducted to gain insight into the progress towards achieving NACCAPs objectives, and specifically into the added value of NACCAP within EDCTP. In addition, the recommendations were made for future steps for the Dutch contribution to EDCTP.
Overall, NACCAP was judged as very relevant, efficient and effective and the added value of NACCAP is regarded high. The MTR showed that NACCAPs contribution to individual and institutional capacity in Africa are successful, that scientific quality has been improved and that both North-South and South-South networking of R&D institutions has been increased. Furthermore, NACCAP is regarded as a highly efficient and well organised programme with little bureaucracy and high flexibility.
At this moment, NACCAP fulfils three distinct roles:
- NACCAP serves as the expert executive agency for DGIS and has experience in research and the African research community;
- NACCAP is the Dutch EDCTP partner and is able to fill in gaps especially at the country level in research capacity building;
- NACCAP is important as an agency for co-funding of Dutch researchers and thus provides an essential service for Dutch science.
However, although contributing already to direct co-funding of EDCTP calls, NACCAP still seems to be regarded as a National Programme mainly. This may hinder the goal of the European Committee in achieving one genuine common pot for European clinical trial research funding for Africa. Therefore, recommendations for the future include not only the maintenance of the NACCAP expertise and continuation of the smoothly running partnership programmes funded by NACCAP, but also the development of a transition strategy to allocate the Dutch contribution more directly to EDCTP. As a first step to achieve this, the ministry of Foreign Affairs will represent the Netherlands in the General Assembly of EDCTP, assisted by the NACCAP/WOTRO bureau.
The MTR-report can be downloaded here.