Towards defining and advancing ‘Made in Africa Evaluation’

African Evaluation Journal

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Towards defining and advancing ‘Made in Africa Evaluation’
 
Creator Omosa, Oladayo Archibald, Thomas Niewolny, Kimberly Stephenson, Max Anderson, James
 
Subject Program Evaluation; Cultural Studies; Development Studies; Indigenous Education Made in Africa Evaluation; indigenous evaluation; culturally responsive evaluation; African evaluation; culture-centered evaluation
Description Background: Most evaluation in Africa is rooted in dominant neoliberal Western approaches. Imported Western evaluation frames may lack multicultural validity and can lead to wrong conclusions and poor development outcomes. They may also reinforce subjugation and cultural hegemony through neo-imperialism and colonisation of the imaginations of those concerned. The Made in Africa Evaluation (MAE) concept has received attention in recent years as a way to address this challenge. As a relatively nascent construct, however, interested scholars and professionals continue to seek to define and operationalise MAE more effectively.Objective: The objective of this study is to provide a working definition of MAE.Methods: We used the Delphi technique to solicit informed views from expert evaluators working in Africa. We interviewed two additional experts to triangulate and test the validity of those findings. We also tested the Delphi derived definition of MAE through the analysis of six illustrative evaluation reports. Finally, we asked the same panel of experts to complete a survey aimed at clarifying next key steps to advance the construct.Results: The results of our efforts to elucidate a concise definition of MAE yielded the following definition: Evaluation that is conducted based on African Evaluation Association (AfrEA) standards, using localised methods or approaches with the aim of aligning all evaluations to the lifestyles and needs of affected African peoples whilst also promoting African values.Conclusion: We posit that this working definition, however tentative, has the potential to influence the practice, study, and teaching of evaluation in Africa.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2021-11-09
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Survey/Interview
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/aej.v9i1.564
 
Source African Evaluation Journal; Vol 9, No 1 (2021); 10 pages 2306-5133 2310-4988
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://aejonline.org/index.php/aej/article/view/564/990 https://aejonline.org/index.php/aej/article/view/564/991 https://aejonline.org/index.php/aej/article/view/564/992 https://aejonline.org/index.php/aej/article/view/564/993
 
Coverage — — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2021 Oladayo Omosa, Thomas Archibald, Kimberly Niewolny, Max Stephenson, James Anderson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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