At the 6th Biennial SAMEA Conference held from 23 to 27 October 2017 in Johannesburg, South Africa; Honorable Dexter Nduna, a Member of Parliament of Zimbabwe and a member of the African Parliamentarians’ Network on Development Evaluation made a lively presentation on “Using Evidence in Decision Making in Government”.
In his presentation, Hon. Nduna advocated for using development evaluation at the legislative level. He noted that development evaluation is a vital tool that can assist governments and organizations to achieve results, especially in this age of globalization. Characteristic of this age, users of evaluation such as governments, parliamentarians, and institutions need to be more responsive to the demands of internal and external stakeholders for good governance, accountability and transparency, greater development effectiveness and delivery of tangible results.
Hon. Nduna also argued that evaluation is not only a tool for oversight, but more importantly, it seeks to illustrate the “theory of change” of programmes or projects, which sets out how to bring about the objectives of these programmes/projects. Understanding the theory of change of a project or programme can help to inform decision making, legislative and oversight processes by governments and parliaments. He put forward multiple examples from his work as Chairman of the Portfolio Committee on Transport and Infrastructure Development in the Parliament of Zimbabwe to demonstrate how evaluation can be effectively used at the legislative level, to monitor the implementation of projects and assess their final outcomes.
Please click here for the presentation of Hon. Dexter Nduna.
For more information on the presentation or to share any comments, kindly contact the APNODE Secretariat at apnode@afdb.org.