Demand & Supply

Improving the ecosystem for commissioners and practitioners of evaluation.

Research has shown that the current supply of good evaluators is constrained, with a relatively small group of professional suppliers taking most of the larger evaluation studies. As governments demand more evaluative evidence, the number and quality of human resources required to meet this will grow. At the current level of demand, problems with the size of the pool of available evaluators, the quality of their deliverables and their ability to respond to government terms of reference, consolidates an already skewed evaluation market.

During 2017 and early 2018, Twende Mbele commissioned a series of diagnostic studies on the supply and demand of evaluators in Uganda, Benin and South Africa. The purpose of the diagnostic studies was to provide a demand and supply profile of evaluators in these three countries.

Important Findings

– Supply generally meets demand, except for some highly specialised evaluations. South Africa demonstrates a risk that demand will outstrip supply in the next few years.

– A barrier to entry is the weakness of governments to formulate, procure and manage evaluations. In Benin and Uganda, donor preference for internationla evaluators presents a barrier for local evaluators.

– Increasing representivity of evalutors is needed. Most are male, older than 40 and in Benin and Uganda, teams are often led by foreigners.

– There are evaluation training options in all three countries, though few to no post-graduate offerings.

– Government officials need more training in how to commission, procure and manage evaluations.

Where are countries at?

– Continuous work to improve the demand for evaluation at the national and sectoral level (including working on sectoral evaluation plans), eg. Uganda’s evidence-based policy making breakfasts

– Ongoing processes of improving the evaluation culture within government, and an emphasis on fostering learning

– Numerous local training and upskilling activities within governments to address demand-side shortcomings.

– South Africa has drafted a capacity building framework for the public service in regard to M&E. They are also updating procurement policies to remedy some transformation issues in the industry.