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In light of the recent global ‘Black lives Matter’ protests, we are increasing seeing a movement for the complete overhaul of racist systems that reinforce and recreate the types actions that result in global inequalities and discrimination based on race, gender and sexual orientation. The protesters which are made up of people of different races, ethnicities, religions and sexual orientation, took to the streets to destroy modern colonial representations in the form of statues, monuments and even flags. Although victory seems to be far away, protestors across the globe have forced politicians to sign regulations and laws which may go a long way in stemming the systemic racism that exists in law enforcement and in the representation of history.

The call for transformation and decolonization is nothing new in African vocabulary – movements toward decolonization of the education and healthcare sectors have been in existence since the 1960s. The development evaluation 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 frequently.

Do they all mean the same thing? If not, then what do they mean? This brief will look to define what the meanings of terms such as, ‘Made in Africa Evaluation’, ‘Indigenous Evaluation’ and ‘Decolonizing Evaluations’. And how they could fast-track the achievement of the continental development agenda.

The brief shares lessons from a case study into the use of the evaluation of the South African government’s response to violence against women and children (VAWC) which was commissioned by the Departments of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME) and Social Development (DSD). The ethnographic account
of the journey of a government-commissioned evaluation from evidence generation to its integration within policy decisions offers lessons both to those involved in evidence generation and those in policy-making institutions.

The research found that because government-commissioned evaluations start with a policy question and respond to demands from policy makers, this shapes the questions to be asked but also promotes subsequent use of the evidence. Having an institutionalised system (National Evaluation System) that encourages the use of evidence created adequate incentives for policy makers to act on the evidence. DPME and DSD evaluation units played an important knowledge brokering role that shaped evidence generation, ensuring that policy makers effectively participate in the evaluation process. They also translated the evaluation evidence to key policy messages, briefing policy makers, and communicating the evaluation once approved. Civil society organisations (CSOs) were also critical to enabling the use of the evaluation by providing spaces for ongoing multi-sector dialogue that proved critical to the sense-making process needed for individuals to act on the evidence. CSOs also pressured government to respond to the problem of VAWC, which created an opportunity for government to use the evidence from the diagnostic review.

The case study reaffirms that use of evidence in a highly contested, and often long, policy process is both important and complex. It is influenced by how the evidence is demanded and generated and what happens after the generation.

This policy brief describes experiences and lessons of policymakers who sought for evidence from the rapid response service situated at Makerere University College of Health Sciences to inform decision processes they were directly involved into. The rapid response service is a knowledge brokerage service that has been in existence for over 10 years providing synthesized evidence in response to urgent demand for evidence, usually within 28 days, from policy and
decision-makers at different levels of decision-making. The rapid response service seeks to remove the barrier of time to access, availability and use of evidence for policy- and decision-makers to promote the increased use of evidence informed decision-making in government.

Rapid evaluations are intended to reduce the costs of evaluation projects and the time they take (DPME, 2020). This is an evaluation which can produce a result that can feed into policy and practice quickly, but yet is sufficiently robust to provide good guidance for decisionmaking.

It addresses the need to quickly assess policy/programme/strategy/function delivery, and establish the main performance data, with main recommendations for improvements (Hercules, 2019). They help us to understand and learn from what works, what doesn’t, when and for whom.

This brief looks at Rapid Evaluations in the public sector of selected African Countries.