IDEV makes a strong contribution to the 9th AfrEA International Conference

The African Evaluation Association (AfrEA) concluded its 9^th biennial International Conference, themed “Accelerating Africa’s Development: Strengthening National Evaluation Ecosystems,” in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire on Friday 15 March, 2019.

Karen Rot-Münstermann, Acting Evaluator General, AfDB, provided closing remarks, noting that, “the African evaluation community is very much alive, engaged and dynamic. There is a growing thirst for evaluation-related knowledge in Africa, as shown by the number of participants at the AfrEA conference and the number of African countries that are setting up Ministries of M&E and adopting national evaluation policies. However there is still a need to develop capacities in evaluation through long-term training, peer learning and professionalization, to ensure we are able to generate evidence that is more rigorous.”

Independent Development Evaluation (IDEV), as a partner of AfrEA, provided logistical and organizational support to the conference; eight IDEV staff contributed to the weeklong event as trainers, session organizers, panellists and chairs; and a further sixteen IDEV colleagues actively participated in the conference.

Over 650 participants from more than 65 countries attended the conference, which ran from the 11 to 15 March and started with a series of pre-conference workshops hosted at the AfDB headquarters for the first two and a half days, followed by another two and a half days of plenary and panel sessions at the Sofitel Hotel in Abidjan. The conference brought together individual and institutional members of AfrEA, representatives of governments, parliaments, development partners, civil society entities, the media, academia, the private sector as well as researchers.

The conference was opened by H.E. Nialé Kaba, the Minister of Planning and Development of Côte d'Ivoire. Charles Boamah, Senior Vice President of the AfDB, Diawara Adama, the President of the Ivoirian Monitoring and Evaluation Network (RISE), and Adeline Sibanda, the President of AfrEA, also gave their opening remarks. In his remarks, Senior Vice President Boamah, among others, noted that, “at the African Development Bank, we know that integrating lessons from evaluations into our policies and programs enhances their effectiveness and efficiency, produces superior results and promotes evidence-based decision making at regional and national levels”.

The Conference sessions were organised around 12 dynamic thematic strands, covering current issues such as: agriculture and food security, Made in Africa evaluation, gender, education and health, integrating Agenda 2063 and 2030 in evaluation, climate change, capacity development, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Perhaps one of the most interesting strands was the Presidential Strand on: “Realizing the vision of Made in Africa evaluation,” which emphasized the importance of Africa-led evaluations, and developing and promoting evaluation theories from Africa.

The event provided an excellent platform to share IDEV’s evaluation knowledge – via the numerous presentations by the IDEV staff, as well as through the dissemination of IDEV evaluation knowledge products. For the participants, it further offered them unique opportunities to network, exchange ideas and experiences.

The Bank has supported AfrEA since its inception, with IDEV and AfDB staff participating actively in its conferences as session organizers, speakers, panellists and discussants. The Bank has hosted previous conference sub-themes, provided financial support to facilitate the organization of the conference, and has sponsored the participation of African parliamentarians and young African evaluators. Over the years, IDEV and Bank staff have also contributed to AfrEA’s flagship publications, both as contributing authors and/or reviewers.

Some of the contributions made by IDEV staff to the 2019 Conference include:

(Click on links for IDEV presentations)

1. A workshop on “Experience capitalization: Relevance and use of learning-oriented evaluative approaches to accelerate Africa´s development,” organized and facilitated by Monica Lomena-Gelis; 
2. A workshop on “Follow up to the Colombo Declaration and EvalColombo2018 – Progress towards regional commitments,” where Kobena Hanson was one of the panellists;
3. A panel session on “Strengthening agricultural value chains for achieving food security and poverty reduction,”  where Girma Kumbi was one of the panellists;
4. A panel session on “The linkages between ‘experience capitalization’ and M&E efforts in projects and organizations, theory and practice,” organized and chaired by Monica Lomena-Gelis;
5. Two panel sessions in the strand “The role of the judiciary, executive and the legislature in evaluation: Responsive national evaluation”, on
   1. (i) “Enhancing parliamentary oversight in Africa: Using evaluative evidence- challenges, opportunities and possibilities”, organised by Nagnouma Kone, who was also one of the panellists, and chaired by Debazou Yantio; and
   2. (ii) “Towards national evaluation systems & evaluation of SDGs: A dialogue between  parliamentarians and the evaluation community,” where Kobena Hanson was one of the panellists;
6. A round table on “How to manage conflict in evaluation: How to make evaluations as useful as possible while respecting evaluation integrity,” co-chaired by Foday Turay with Burt Perrin;
7. A panel session on “Climate change: adaptation, vulnerability and resilience: evaluation and learning,”, chaired by Svetlana Negroustoueva
8. A panel session on “Feminist evaluation: First-hand experiences of (challenges and taboos faced plus lessons learnt when) doing feminist evaluation”, with Svetlana Negroustoueva as one of the panellists.
9. Panel session on “Independent evaluation of African Development Bank Group Program-Based Operations", co-chaired by Clément Banse ;
10. A panel discussion on “The Fourth Industrial Revolution and its impact on development and the implications for African evaluation,” where Kobena Hanson made a presentation on disruptive technologies, innovation and development in Africa, and their implications for African evaluation practitioners.

IDEV looks forward to the next edition of the AfrEA International Conference, which will be held in 2021, in Ethiopia.