Six Transformative African Rooted Evaluation Frameworks and Tools

Abstract

There is a call to strengthen African-led development by empowering the communities, practitioners, and policymakers to design, monitor, and evaluate projects in ways that promote community participation, ownership, and sustainability of projects. At the global level, the tools should centre African voices in evaluation theory and practice, challenging dominant Western worldviews and making Africa a contributor to global knowledge production. In response to the call, the Mastercard Foundation funded the Pan-African Indigenous Evaluation Consortium (PAIEC), a team consisting of five entities led by Bagele Chilisa of the University of Botswana to develop evaluation frameworks, tools, and guidelines that are rooted in African world views, philosophies, values and realities of the African communities. Five innovative and transformative evaluation frameworks were developed. What follows is a brief description of each framework. CULTURAL EMPOWERMENT TOOL (“NGWANAKE”) This is a youth/community cultural empowerment tool that combines the use of technology and cultural knowledge and skills in the evaluation of interventions. Many development and evaluation projects in Africa continue to use methods of project design and evaluation that do not fit local cultures or ways of life. This leads to exclusion and marginalization of youths and local communities in evaluation practice resulting in the projects not being relevant or meeting their needs and aspirations. The key insight of the framework is cultural empowerment, leveraging on the integration of culture and technology which makes evaluation more local, more meaningful, and easier to sustain. The framework offers a new way to do evaluation that combines African culture, youth energy, and technology through Cultural Integration, Cultural Innovation and Autonomy (Jitegemee): • Cultural Integration: This stage helps youth and communities incorporate their culture into project planning and evaluation. • Cultural Innovation: This incorporates the integrations of culture and technology which promote creativity in 'projects design and evaluation practice. • Autonomy (Jitegemee): This stage focuses on independence and pride. Communities use their culture to share success stories—through songs, proverbs, or videos—and keep improving their work. It builds self- reliance and ownership of results. This framework helps turn evaluations into tools for empowerment—not just for measurement. It shows that when people's culture and technology work together, the results are stronger and longer-lasting. When young people and communities integrate their own culture and technology in evaluation, they become active players in their own development. The Cultural empowerment framework promotes Intergenerational learning through innovation, inclusion and ownership.