Growing and nurturing monitoring and evaluation on the African continent

Abstract

The growing demand for evaluations and other evidence for decision-making requires African institutions, particularly universities to educate and train highly qualified and skilled evaluators who can produce evaluations of high quality and improve ways in which the findings are utilised by policy makers or governments. But not so long ago, a consensus view emerged, namely, that the following systemic challenges and capacity constraints existed and that only slow progress was being made. • The limited existence of well-designed, well-run, affordable, customised-for-the-Africancontext education and training opportunities, providing the basis for quality life-long professional development that is cumulative. • Lack of a common ‘body of knowledge’ and minimum education curriculum requirements for a course for evaluation suitable to the African context. • Lack of adequate infrastructure for teaching evaluation courses to a 21st-century audience especially using blended-learning technologies. (Porter & Goldman 2013; Tarsilla 2014)