Evaluation in the time of Corona: Adapting to and evaluating a new reality
Rapid advances in technologies resulting from the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) and related digitization are changing the way information and knowledge are created, used and shared. How have these shifts affected evaluation? How should evaluators adapt to the proliferation of big data or blockchain encryption to avoid becoming obsolete? What do we need to harness and how?
A “culture of evaluation” is often lauded as a key solution to improving the effectiveness and efficiency of governments, development organisations and international financial institutions alike. The extant literature suggests that for results, performance management, evaluation and research functions to be effective, organizations and institutions need a strong culture of evaluation – one where evidence is deliberately sought in order to better design, implement and deliver interventions.
This edition of Made in Africa Evaluations explores indigenous approaches and how they could fast-track the achievement of the continental development agendas – the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (Agenda 2030) and the African Union Agenda 2063. We asked contributors to respond to one or all of the three following questions: What is meant by “Made in Africa” evaluation and how does it differ from other approaches? What unique insights could an African cognitive lens bring to evaluation? How should countries go about creating indigenous evaluation practices?
Development evaluation approaches have grown into a largely uniform global practice, in particular among development organizations ascribing to internationally agreed norms such as the OECD-DAC evaluation criteria. However, these accepted common approaches have increasingly come under scrutiny by those who argue that the roots of most of the evaluation practices commonly used in development have been developed by organizations from the Global North, making them unsuitable for use in the Global South.
IDEV is pleased to share its editorial calendar for Evaluation Matters 2020/21. Editors welcome topical articles from writers’ original work and will be pleased to consider contributions for the themes below, up to the closing date for each quarterly edition.