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In April of 2018, Twende Mbele and the Office of the Evaluation of Public Policies and Analysis of Government Action (BEPPAAG), commissioned a diagnostic study on the demand and supply of evaluators. The study focused on the following:

• evaluation market (its strengths and weaknesses),
• the supply and demand capacities for evaluation services (to take stock of skills and identify needs for evaluation capacity building to balance demand and supply for evaluators)
• the size of the evaluation market (as a means of achieving a balance between supply and demand for evaluation), especially in a context of growing demand for valuations.

This diagnostic study on the supply and demand of evaluators in South Africa revealed that on the supply side, the size of the potential supply market will vary depending on how an ‘evaluation consultant’ is defined. The diagnostic was able to produce quantitative estimates of current and projected government demand and some qualitative assessment of non-government demand. It was also able to identify qualitative issues and insights into the research questions related to capacity and skills, representivity, accessibility, pricing and costs.

In April of 2018, Twende Mbele and the Office of the Prime Minister commissioned a diagnostic study on the supply and demand of evaluators in Uganda. On the supply side, the study established that there is a substantial potential pool of M&E consultants in Uganda. The study also established that there are a number of organisations and networks for evaluation capacity building in Uganda. On the demand side, the Government has in place guidelines for the public sector and the Ugandan Evaluation Association has developed and approved standard guidelines that stipulate that evaluators and evaluation teams must be independent, trustworthy and transparently selected.

This article documents the experience of these three countries and summarises the progress made in deepening and widening their national evaluation systems and some of the cross-cutting lessons emerging at an early stage of the Twende Mbele partnership.

Enhancing public sector performance is on the agenda of most governments. In South Africa, there is a dearth on studies that systematically assess the implementation of public sector performance improvement tools. This article is based on the study that explores the implementation of the Management Performance Assessment Tool (MPAT) within the South African public sector for the period 2011-2016. The critical implementation components are outlined and lessons from the implementation process are drawn to inform future practice.