CREST researcher and alumni present at 8th AfrEA Conference in Uganda

News, April 2017

The African Evaluation Association (AfrEA) 8^th annual conference was held in Kampala, Uganda from the 27^th to the 31^st of March 2017. This year the theme of the conference was ‘Evaluation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Opportunities and Challenges for Africa. There were 20 strands which included; a) professionalization for evaluation, b) evaluating health, c) evaluating education, d) made in Africa evaluation, and e) the role of governments in evaluating the SDGs. Conference attendees were from at least 23 African countries as well as Europe, North America, the Caribbean and Australasia.

Rhoda Goremucheche, a researcher at CREST as well as two CREST alumni, Tsvakai-Ishe Mapuranga and Aina Kamati presented at the conference. Rhoda presented her findings from her research on evaluator competencies in South Africa entitled “Towards achieving consensus on essential competencies for evaluation practice in South Africa

Professionalization Evaluation”. The Centre for Learning on Evaluation and Results Anglophone Africa (CLEAR AA), the South African Monitoring and Evaluation Association (SAMEA) and CREST supported this research that forms part of her PhD.

Aina presented findings from the research she conducted as part of her MPhil in Monitoring and Evaluation. The title of her paper is “A thematic review of UNICEF evaluation reports in Anglophone sub-Saharan African countries (2005-2015)”. Tsvakai-ishe also presented findings from her research entitled, “Features of evaluations in humanitarian action evaluations in Africa”. Both studies were reviews of reports from the African Evaluation Database (AfrED) that has been built by CREST on behalf of CLEAR AA. Engagement and feedback from conference attendees indicated that the research presented by the CREST alumni is critical as we try to understand the sub Saharan evaluation landscape. The development of the database and its potential as a platform to showcase evaluation research from across Africa (including research conducted as part of tertiary studies) was lauded by participants.