Global health monitoring and evaluation partnerships as contested spaces in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Background: Global health partnerships (GHPs) have flourished across Africa as alternative governance mechanisms seeking to strengthen local health systems for effective national planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. Mutual and trust-based relationships anticipate fostering relations that build weak systems for improved availability of data and information for local informed decision-making and programme learning. Objectives: This article aims to explore and demonstrate how global health monitoring and evaluation partnerships (GHM&EPs) are contested spaces contrary to the pervasive collaborative discourse in official government policies. Method: Data for this study were collected using content analysis of existing documents and key informant interviews for a qualitative case study. Furthermore, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) policy documents and key informant interviews with the M&E staff from the Ministry of Health and Child Care, Zimbabwe, were purposively selected. Ethics clearance was sought from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, HSREC/00002455/2021. Results: The results show that GHM&EPs are contested spaces despite the expectation to foster mutual trust and improved availability of quality data and information for informed decision-making and learning. Evidence shows partner contests through unspectacular soft power strategies to counterbalance resource and power imbalances in partnerships. Conclusion: The evidence of unspectacular soft power strategies suggests that collaboration for M&E conceals and prolongs opportunities for addressing practical and contested challenges, hence failing the test for ideal partnerships. Contribution: The article contributes to a critical understanding of the limitations of the current theorisation of partnerships, which erroneously assumes trust, mutuality, and equality between resourced and under-resourced partners.