How to Know if a Project Has Truly Made a Difference

How can we determine if a project has genuinely changed something? This question guides the work of Hadhami Hammi Gharbi, a Tunisian expert in Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) at the Secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in Ghana. With over a decade of experience in international cooperation, she is dedicated to turning data into a decision-making tool and results into a source of learning. Little known to the general public, this Tunisian expert recently shared her career journey in an interview with Managers.

A Career Forged by Curiosity

Nothing in her background particularly destined her for this profession. After studying English, her first opportunity at a non-governmental organization opened the doors to international development. She discovered a world where projects are built through direct field engagement, with specific objectives to achieve, funding to manage, and beneficiaries whose needs cannot always be reduced to the figures in a report. Curiosity took hold and became the guiding thread of her career.

A subsequent stint at Deloitte refined her understanding of organizations. Her role, which focused more on training than on the operational management of projects, helped her grasp an essential driver of success: a strategy, no matter how well-designed, remains a dead letter if teams lack the necessary skills to implement it. Therefore, training is also about preparing an organization to work better, gain autonomy, and achieve its goals. This experience fueled her interest in strategic management and governance, which she further deepened through an Executive MBA at Université Paris-Dauphine.

The Lucidity of Monitoring and Evaluation

Monitoring and evaluation gradually emerged as her area of specialization. Behind this technical term lies an exercise in lucidity. A program may adhere to its schedule, organize all planned activities, and spend the allocated funds without achieving the desired changes. It is then necessary to examine results closely, understand the gaps, and determine what needs to be corrected.

“My role is to transform data into decisions, results into lessons, and lessons into levers for action,” she explains.

In Tunisia, her missions on programs supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) led her to work on youth employment, SME development, and governance. Among her key experiences is the Monitoring and Evaluation for Tunisia and Libya platform, implemented by IBTCI for the USAID mission in Tunisia. There, she provided support for the monitoring and evaluation of a portfolio of 11 programs and more than 15 partners. Coordinating evaluations, verifying data quality, and preparing analyses for decision-makers required constant attention to facts. She also worked on programs such as Tunisia Jobs, TADAEEM, and MA3AN.

These experiences taught her an essential lesson: evaluation is not about assigning good or bad grades. It is about understanding why an action works, identifying obstacles, and giving teams the means to improve their work. The approach is as much about analysis as it is about learning. It allows organizations to learn from mistakes, refine methods, and prevent the same difficulties from recurring.

Scaling Impact at the AfCFTA Secretariat

In Ghana, within the AfCFTA Secretariat, her work takes on a different scale. She provides technical leadership for monitoring and evaluation across the institution and contributes to assessing the impact of initiatives undertaken in member countries to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. The task requires reconciling sometimes differing national priorities, tracking progress, and producing robust evidence to inform decision-making.

Key Initiatives

Youth at Work She notably contributes to the Youth at Work program, launched in 2025 with $49 million in funding from the Mastercard Foundation. Scheduled for the period 2025–2028, the program aims to strengthen the economic participation of young Africans, particularly through entrepreneurship, vocational training, and access to employment. For an MEL specialist, the decisive question is one of implementation. Do training programs lead to jobs? Are young entrepreneurs able to grow their businesses? Do the proposed mechanisms meet market needs? These are questions that data must help answer.

Continental Agri-Trade Action Plan Another major project is the Continental Agri-Trade Action Plan, developed by the AfCFTA in partnership with Rwanda and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). This plan aims to remove obstacles to intra-African agricultural trade, strengthen regional value chains, and facilitate producers’ access to markets. Hadhami Hammi Gharbi contributes to its development and works with governments to support its adoption and implementation.

Implications for Tunisia

Tunisia has every reason to closely follow these developments. Olive oil, dates, and other national products can find new outlets on the continent, provided that companies have the necessary commercial networks, logistical solutions, and information.

“The challenge for Tunisia is not just to be present in the African market, but to position itself sustainably within the continent’s value dynamics,” she emphasizes. African integration will only make full sense if the opportunities opened by the agreement translate into orders, partnerships, and activity for businesses.

Looking Ahead: Data, AI, and Continuous Improvement

The next chapter of her career is defined by this pursuit of better-informed decision-making. Hadhami Hammi Gharbi wishes to deepen her expertise in steering the performance of institutions and public policies. She is also interested in data analysis, digital transformation, and the responsible use of artificial intelligence in her field. These tools can help identify trends and risks more quickly, provided that data remains reliable and human judgment is not abandoned to algorithms.

Her conviction is simple: “Measuring progress is necessary, but the real added value of my expertise is helping institutions implement actions more effectively, manage risks, and adopt the principle of continuous improvement.” In this discipline, numbers never tell the whole story. One must know how to interpret them, understand what they leave unsaid, and draw the decisions that will make the difference.