Scandinavian Donors in Africa: A Reflection on Evaluation Reporting Standards

Background: It is imperative to recognise the effects of the intrinsically Eurocentric development agenda on attaining transformative evaluation that appropriately addresses development priorities in Africa. The role of international development agencies as critical anchors in African evaluation practice needs examination to advance the Made in Africa Evaluation (MAE) discourse.Objectives: This article critiques the dominance of a Eurocentric lens to evaluation in Africa, illustrating how this impedes MAE. It harnesses the importance of MAE as a transformative, contextually relevant approach to espousing Afrocentric values in evaluation theory and practice.Method: Through a desktop review, the article examines the intrinsic power relations inherent in Western knowledge systems and how the effects of coloniality on African knowledge systems can deter the progression of a transformative, decolonial evaluation agenda.Results: The article recognises positive strides towards legitimising African knowledge systems and harnessing a more African evaluation agenda, for example, through the African Evaluation Association (AfrEA), leading the standardisation of African evaluation competencies and guidelines.Conclusion: It establishes, however, the adverse effects of long-standing power imbalances, with the development agenda in Africa being primarily set by international development organisations, such as donors. This leaves little room for African evaluators to manoeuvre and define contextually appropriate approaches to the evaluation outside of the dominant Eurocentric evaluation standards. The article contributes to understanding the role of the dominant international development agencies on evaluation in Africa and proposes recommendations for achieving a more decolonised evaluation agenda. It highlights the importance of the legitimisation of African knowledge systems, a multidisciplinary approach to monitoring and evaluation (ME), ensuring inclusivity and representation in evaluation and negotiating power balances with international development agencies.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Effect Of International Development Agencies On the Made...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The effects of coloniality and international development assistance on Made in Africa Evaluation: Implications for a decolonised evaluation agenda

Khumalo¹

2022

“…Furthermore, the design, implementation and commissioning viewpoint of evaluations in the African context conveys the values and viewpoint of the commissioners and the funders, who mostly come from the Global North. In addition, the commissioners and programme funders provide opportunities to Global North evaluators, who are regarded as having 'superior evaluation skills' and display similar viewpoints and values (Ngwabi & Wildschut, 2019). Therefore, the prevailing worldview in evaluations is from the Global North and is guided by epistemological assumptions that are derived from the Global North and are imposed on sub-Saharan Africa.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reshaping how we think about evaluation: A made in Africa evaluation perspective

Masvaure

Motlanthe²

2022

Background: The African development space is dominated by the Western hegemony that shapes the structural funding model, knowledge transfer and aid. Western hegemony defines the Western countries or development funders as superior to the aid receivers, without necessarily acknowledging the role of colonial history and racism that defined and influenced the underdevelopment of African countries. In the African context, the Global North uses liberalism as a tool to maintain hegemony; hence, there is no need to use colonial coercion as liberalism is self-reinforcing, self-legitimising and self-perpetuating. It absorbs counter-hegemony via its international institutions, economic interdependence and democracy.Objectives: This article examines how evaluation as a tool has perpetuated Western hegemony on the epistemological, axiological and ontological understanding of development in sub-Saharan Africa.Methods: The approach adopted in this article involved a traditional review of literature, analysis of tacit knowledge and personal experiences on evaluation practice in Africa.Results: Firstly, the article demonstrates that the theories and practice behind international development are based on colonial thinking and subjugation that permeate themselves throughout the conceptualisation, design and implementation and how results of development interventions are evaluated and viewed. Secondly, the article provides practical steps on how to decolonise international development and evaluations in Africa. The findings also show that evaluations should not be treated separately from the dominant forces that define international development. The evaluation field is a microcosm and an appendage of Western hegemonic influence on international development.Conclusion: The article concludes by advocating for the need to change the approach to international development and evaluation practice and emphasising the centrality of the worldviews and values of targeted populations by development interventions.

“…One of the results of the neocolonial nature of development is that many development organisations from the Global North have operational and procurement systems which incentivise the appointments of lead evaluators from their country of origin (Denny-Smith et al 2019;Kithatu-Kiwekete & Phillips 2020;Ngwabi & Wildschut 2019). This relegates local evaluators, who may be able to provide leadership around contextually appropriate framing for an evaluation to data collectors within evaluations that have already been defined in scope and direction (Uwizeyimana 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A scoping review of intersections between indigenous knowledge systems and complexity-responsive evaluation research

Mapitsa

2022

Background: Acknowledging the need to transform the evaluation sector in Africa, locally generated approaches have been a recent area of contestation for both researchers and practitioners. Whilst the need for an African evaluation approach has been well established in the literature, there are still significant gaps in a proactive response. One of these gaps is the role of indigenous knowledge systems in these evaluation approaches. Indigenous knowledge systems have been a priority research area for decades, often in fields of science and technology, education and in research methods. Despite these strong overlaps with areas of interest to evaluators, there has been relatively little intersection between research on evaluation systems and that on indigenous knowledge systems.Objectives: This article brings together these two areas of research to see what lessons for African-rooted evaluation approaches emerge from the body of research on indigenous knowledge systems.Method: To do this, a scoping review was conducted, applying a thematic analysis to literature identified for inclusion in the study.Results: This study found that there is considerable scope for the evaluation sector to draw on indigenous knowledge systems research, particularly drawing on process and methodological lessons from designing studies, as well as defining power dynamics and critical systems approaches.Conclusion: This analysis can contribute to a needed debate about how to define and promote localised, contextually relevant evaluation tools and methods. It can also contribute to building a research agenda around African evaluation approaches.