Within the context of increasing globalisation and integration of economies, the formulation of relevant policies and their implementation present a major challenge. The growing concern with accountability and progressive improvement of strategies confers a key role on evaluation in these respect.

Evaluation at the level of aid programmes and public policies is at the heart of ADE's range of activities. ADE provides various types of evaluation support:

• implementation of evaluation studies, from ex ante through to ex post;
• development and promotion of evaluation methods and tools on the basis of acquired experience and expertise;
• capacity-building in evaluation through training and creation of and support for networks of evaluators;
• dissemination of evaluation results, for instance through organisation of workshops or participation in conferences.

To date ADE has carried out more than hundred evaluations. These studies:

• have been commissioned by different types of client at international (European Commission, UN, World Bank), national, regional or local levels;
• concern different fields of expertise, mainly development aid, regional development and competitiveness, and agricultural and rural development;
• have been conducted at global, EU, regional, country or local level;
• include policy, strategy, programme and project evaluations.

ADE offers the advantage of combining key expertise in evaluation - capitalising on its wide expertise in the field - with sector expertise drawn from its three other areas of excellence. ADE has dedicated staff working exclusively on evaluations and who are specialised in complex strategic level evaluations.