Are black evaluators breathing?
A screening check on the utility of evaluation approaches under COVID19
Writing this article in a time of a global Covid19 pandemic is amongst the most difficult tasks to do. As a proponent of the Made in Africa Evaluation (MAE), it is an opportune time to reflect on how the monitoring and evaluation landscape of Africa is being shaped. Such reflections come at a time when another heart-breaking moment in black history occurred in the USA with the murder of George Floyd at the hands of white policemen – who are meant to administer safety and security to society. His expression, “I can’t breathe” became a slogan for the black lives matter movement as an expression of the sad state of racial affairs in the world.
It is the global response to the “black lives matter” campaign that African scholars and Evaluators ought to leverage to transform evaluation to a more inclusive and accommodative of African centred approaches. This article argues that African evaluators’ ‘breathing’ is impaired, and that the global pandemic is an opportune moment to check the symptoms of marginalisation, exclusion and lack of opportunities which African evaluators are subjected to.
It is undeniable that for centuries the ‘knee’ of colonisation has been inflicted upon black people – a narrative often continued and reinforced through the ‘development’ sector. This effectively means that their collective breathing patterns have been under siege based on their blackness. It is not surprising that Black researchers/evaluators who wish to contribute to shaping the development and evaluation sectors continue to encounter systematic exclusions. More concerning, there seems to be ignorance and implicit acceptance of this racially bias system which thrives at the exclusion of the people it is reliant upon. We all agree that this exclusion is unfair and unjust, but the question of why this continues remains unanswered.
This blog, therefore, calls for the immediacy in the implementation of a tangible (moves beyond [1]talking left and walking right) transformational agenda in the field of evaluation. This urgent agenda should strive to ensure that the voices, lenses, nuances and ideologies of black researchers/evaluators are firstly recognised, respected and subsequently given space to influence the practice.
Monitoring and evaluation is an important approach and tool for measuring outcomes of development programmes, yet it remains a ‘nice to have’ for the most part. It can play a role of screening ‘symptoms’ of malfunction in development programmes and interventions. It has been bestowed by various experts with the mandate to ascertain what works and does not work including why things do not work in development. Sometimes referred to as the evaluation praxis, it has both the competencies and capabilities to foretell answers to complex problems. As the continent responds to Covid19, there remains a space for African evaluators to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of the programmes and interventions.
As a black evaluation professional located in South Africa, I have been preoccupied with more questions than answers during this pandemic. Since evaluation involves measurement and making a judgement, what is the temperature of this nascent but growing profession in the era of Covid-19? Using the “I cannot breathe” analogy from George Floyd’s last words, is evaluation in South Africa – and across the continent more broadly – breathing?
Mokgophana Ramasobana is an Independent M&E Expert and a South African Monitoring and Evaluation (SAMEA) board member. He writes this article in his personal capacity.
Transforming Evaluations for Africa – Webinar
The call for transformation and decolonization is nothing new in African vocabulary, there’s been calls for decolonization education and healthcare sectors, and the transformation of political and economic participation in terms of more women being represented. The evaluation development space has not been exempted from these calls. Over the years, there’s been growing calls for the transformation of the evaluation landscape with more female representation and the use of more black evaluators in the space. Phrases such as: Made In Africa Evaluation; Indigenous Evaluation; and Decolonizing Evaluations have been touted more and more frequency.
Do they all mean the same thing? If not, then what do they mean? This webinar titled ‘Transforming Evaluations for Africa’ will look to unpack the meanings of phrases such as ‘Made In Africa Evaluation’, ‘Indigenous Evaluation’ and ‘Decolonizing Evaluations’.
Click the following link to register for this webinar: http://bit.do/fGPgc
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Pamoja Newsletter – July 2020
Welcome to the latest edition of the Pamoja newsletter. We hope you are safe during these uncertain times! After almost two years in the making, we are particularly proud and excited to report that both Niger and Kenya have become core country partners in the Twende Mbele programme. This is to say that the two countries now sit in the management committee where programmatic decisions are made. We salute all the health workers, doctors, nurses and scientists who are working around the clock to save lives and bring an end to this virus. We also salute our partner country members who form part of the various COVID-19 task teams put together to combat the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has disrupted the way of life for many around the world, and Africa is not exception. Remote learning, teaching and working have become the new norm as countries look to stop the spread of the virus.
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Webinar Alert – 15 May 2020
Join us for a webinar titled, “Effective Collaboration Between Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and Government”. This webinar will bring together Government Officials, M&E practitioners, researchers and experts who work in/with Civil Society Organizations (CSOs). It will focus on some of the work done by Twende Mbele through its partnership with (CLEAR-AA), and the work done by other organizations and institutions in various sectors across the African Continent.
This webinar will tap into the experiences of our partners working in/with CSOs in countries such as Ghana, South Africa and others, particularly on areas for enhanced collaboration between CSO’s and government in the national monitoring and evaluation systems (NMES), for the purposes of improving accountability and government performance.
Use the following link to register for the webinar: https://cutt.ly/zyxqwSe