African Evaluation Association (AfrEA) has called for advancing the Africa-driven evaluation approach to devise and assess development plans, policies and strategies across all sectors in individual countries of the continent.
AfrEA made the call on Thursday ahead of its Silver Jubilee celebration to be held from June 16 to 18 June, 2025 under the theme “Celebrating 25 Years of Excellence in Africa-Rooted Evaluation: Building a Stronger Future Together.”
Briefing journalists in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, current president of AfrEA Miche Ouedraogo, said African-rooted evaluation is growing in leaps and bounds, with more and more national governments, professional evaluators and organizations getting serious about increasing the quality and capacity to do and use evaluation across the continent.
“African-rooted evaluation, often referred to as “Made in Africa Evaluation”, reflects African culture and history, with a minimal or no influence of Western hegemony, and African evaluators especially young ones have more clarity about responding to contexts and needs of the continent,” Ouedraogo said.
He said AfrEA remains committed to promoting African evaluation, fostering knowledge exchange, and supporting evidence-based policymaking to drive sustainable development across the continent.
Ethiopian State Minister for Planning and Development Tirumar Abate urged for promoting African-rooted evaluation with the aim of aligning the evaluation process with the lifestyle and needs of African people while also promoting African values.
“Most evaluations in Africa are rooted in dominant Western approaches, in fact lack validity, leading to low quality evaluations, wrong conclusions, and bad development outcomes,” said the state minister, noting that Africans are capable of high quality evaluations by themselves.
The 25th anniversary of AfrEA is expected to bring together about 300 evaluation experts, policymakers, development practitioners, and government officials to reflect on AfrEA’s achievements and chart a course in the future.
AfrEA aims to strengthen its evaluation capacity across Africa, ensuring that data driven decision-making remains at the heart of policy formulation across the African continent.
MG/abj/APA