Professor Chilisa was honoured and given an award for excellence as ‘the most widely cited author on ‘Made in Africa Evaluation’, and the author with the highest number of articles on ‘Made in Africa Evaluation’ making Africa’s contribution to the global discourse on evaluation for development visible. A handbook on Made in Africa Evaluation, for which Professor Chilisa is co-editor, was also launched at the award ceremony.
Formed in 1999, AfrEA drives evaluation that serves Africa’s development agenda, which is people-driven and seeks African solutions to Africa’s problems. AfrEA is poised to play an important role in the African Union’s Agenda 2063, which calls for monitoring and evaluation frameworks that speak to accountability of governments and their institutions, evidence-based decision making, ownership of programmes by citizens, and equitable distribution of programme benefits. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development urges countries to commit to evaluation that will help countries learn, understand, and support transformative and systemic changes needed for development. In response to the evaluation of development projects by external evaluators using decontextualised evaluation tools, and reports that narrate the success of projects when on the ground, nothing changes. AfrEA called for evaluation rooted in the world views, culture, values, histories, and experience of African people and named it MAE.
