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This report presents results from a tracer study conducted by CLEAR-AA in partnership with Twende Mbele following their capacity strengthening interventions aimed at improving evidence use and M&E processes in African parliaments between 2017 and 2018. The tracer study data presented in this report was collected from participants based in Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Ghana, Kenya, Benin, Malawi, Zambia, Nigeria and South Africa. The study participants were largely drawn from national parliaments (these also included members of the African Parliamentarians’ Network on Development Evaluation – APNODE), but also to a lesser extent from regional parliaments, Voluntary Organisations for Professional Evaluation (VOPES), government, academia and civil society entities.

The main objectives of the tracer study were:

• to better understand the effectiveness of the capacity strengthening interventions (Training, Training of Trainers (ToT), and Peer Learning workshops) particularly in terms of learning, application, and transfer of knowledge and skills with regards to strengthening evidence use in parliaments;
• to generate foundational evidence around effective capacity development approaches that could be built on;
• to provide recommendations on how the effectiveness and sustainability of parliamentary capacity strengthening initiatives can be improved.

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 all mean? This webinar titled ‘What Meant by Transforming Evaluation for Africa’ will look to unpack what the meanings of phrases such as ‘Made In Africa Evaluation’, ‘Indigenous Evaluation’ and ‘Decolonizing Evaluations’.

Part A: Introduction to rapid evaluation

1. Introduction

2. Purpose of Guideline

3. What do we mean by Rapid Evaluations

4. Deciding when to use rapid evaluations (why consider, advantages/disads, which situations

5. Deciding how to implement rapid evaluations

6. Summary of the main features of rapid evaluations

Part B: Designing a rapid evaluation Structured as per DPME Guideline:

This toolkit provides a framework to think about rapid evaluations, and provides example questions, indicators and tools to do it.

Rapid evaluations is, in many ways, relatively straightforward. It is however, new in the government system, and this resource provides information and a helping hand with how to embed it in the work of the interested official.

Rapid evaluations address the need to quickly assess policy/programme/strategy/function delivery, and establish the main performance data, with main recommendations for improvements. They help us to understand and learn from what works, what doesn’t, when and for whom. It is also an important tool for accountability, helping departments and entities to demonstrate uptake, and that our work as policy/programme/project/strategy/service delivery managers is of high quality and useful. Rapid evaluations are the latest addition to the National Evaluation System in government, and can be undertaken internally by officials, and/or involve procurement of service providers.

This toolkit is intended for use by officials in evaluations,, research and policy/programme/project/service delivery implementation working in national/provincial/local government departments and Schedule I & II entities.

It is based the work of the DPME extend the NES to include rapid evaluations to encourage sharing and learning; to improve the quality, reach and use of evaluations; and to produce evidence for decision-making quickly. Rapid evaluations is still a work in progress; we are publishing this guide in the hope that it will be useful to others, but also that it will invite discussion and shared learning.

Evaluations are important for assessing the performance of an intervention and how it can be strengthened. The National Evaluation Policy Framework (NEPF) 2019 suggests the use of rapid evaluations as one of the forms of evaluation to be considered (DPME, 2019). It suggests that ‘Quick evaluations are conducted during emergencies2; or as part of preliminary analysis to help determine priorities, identify emerging problems and trends, and enable decision-making to either support a full-scale evaluation or project adjustments to meet the needs or project objectives. It may be responding to an unplanned senior management request or demand for urgent information, a juncture where a critical decision needs to be made on a programme or intervention and up to date information is needed urgently. The implementation of this type of evaluation is usually faster, more dynamic and complex’ (ibid p 24).