Date: Thursday, September 18, 2025
My name is Mark Abrahams. I’m a Senior Research Associate with Southern Hemisphere, a Social Development Agency based in Cape Town, South Africa. I am a founder member of the South African Monitoring and Evaluation Association (SAMEA) and a former chairperson. I am the founder Editor-in-chief of the African Evaluation Journal, a publication of the African Evaluation Association (AfrEA). You will find other blogs at this site: sameawc
I listened to the song, ‘Bang the drum’ while reflecting on the growth and development of Monitoring and Evaluation on the African continent. This song, by a group called Mango Groove is a call to celebrate life and love while banging the drum for all to hear. Drumming is about communicating, about sharing, about celebrating during times of peace and prosperity and sounding alarm during times of adversity and strife,
We can bang our drum(s) because M&E in Africa has much to celebrate. We have many more locally written M&E texts available; we have contextually relevant principles that can guide our practices. We have the African Evaluation Journal (AEJ). There are strong Voluntary Organisations for Professional Evaluators (VOPEs) spread across Africa. Many governments have developed M&E frameworks to inform. Ongoing successful conferences by VOPEs, the African Evaluation Association (AfrEA), parallel structures like the African Evidence Network; Seminars and workshops by EvalPartners, IDEAS and ongoing support by CLEAR (Anglophone Africa and Francophone Africa), funders such as Mastercard Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation all bring together practitioners, emerging evaluators and professionals to continuously shape M&E in Africa. There are daily webinars popping up where all aspects of M&E are addressed such as Made in Africa Evaluation (MAE), indigenous methodologies, gender imperatives for evaluation, the climate crisis and responsive approaches, including de-colonising approaches.
We also beat our drum as a ‘call to action’ and as a warning, that all is not well and we need to act collectively, quickly and with some urgency. The song ‘Bang the drum’ reminds us of the complexity of our environment and the mixed emotions that go along with the different experiences we endure. The following verse captures this complexity:
I appreciate the collective opportunity and challenge communicated by these words. These are ‘our’ opportunities, ‘our’ challenges; it is ‘our’ moment of urgency to respond to the polycrisis that feeds dehumanising policies and practices of xenophobia, homophobia, pandemics and genocide. Our ‘madness’ is manifested in starving masses, hunger, homelessness, and pain and suffering because of war, conflict, natural disasters, uncaring government policies and apathy.
Our M&E practices in Africa, our ideas, our initiatives and our frameworks must be responsive to these challenges. We need to think evaluatively about what we share and how we share what we develop, otherwise it will all lead to a ‘heartbreak’. Bang the drum for emerging evaluators to use the same technology for common good and not just for personal gratification. Bang the drum for government employees to explore of rigorous M&E frameworks.
Here are our AfrEA lessons learned:
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