Background: South Africa has pioneered national evaluation systems (NESs) along with Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Uganda and Benin. South Africa’s National Evaluation Policy Framework (NEPF) was approved by Cabinet in November 2011. An evaluation of the NES started in September 2016.Objectives: The purpose of the evaluation was to assess whether the NES had had an impact on the programmes and policies evaluated, the departments involved and other key stakeholders; and to determine how the system needs to be strengthened.Method: The evaluation used a theory-based approach, including international benchmarking, five national and four provincial case studies, 112 key informant interviews, a survey with 86 responses and a cost-benefit analysis of a sample of evaluations.Results: Since 2011, 67 national evaluations have been completed or are underway within the NES, covering over $10 billion of government expenditure. Seven of South Africa’s nine provinces have provincial evaluation plans and 68 of 155 national and provincial departments have departmental evaluation plans. Hence, the system has spread widely but there are issues of quality and the time it takes to do evaluations. It was difficult to assess use but from the case studies it did appear that instrumental and process use were widespread. There appears to be a high return on evaluations of between R7 and R10 per rand invested.Conclusion: The NES evaluation recommendations on strengthening the system ranged from legislation to strengthen the mandate, greater resources for the NES, strengthening capacity development, communication and the tracking of use.

Appreciation is not just looking at the good stuff. In this chapter, we set out to appreciate Appreciative Inquiry-to develop a rounded understanding of its strengths and limitations from different perspectives and to increase its value for evaluators.Appreciative Inquiry offers considerable promise as an addition to the evaluator's repertoire, particularly for those of us who work with a range of programs and organizations with an eye on the ultimate impact of our work, but the descriptions of Appreciative Inquiry in this volume tell only part of the story. Appreciative Inquiry can be a useful and valuable technique in the right circumstances and when well implemented, but it is not always appropriate and it requires special skills and abilities to be done properly. Nor is it only about finding nice things to say about a program.Even for those who are not interested in adopting Appreciative Inquiry, there is much to be learned from this issue about what is needed for evaluation to effectively incorporate techniques and approaches from other disciplines and professions. Overenthusiastic promotion of any new approach to evaluation risks oversimplifying the processes involved and the demands it makes on those who seek to use it.Thanks to John Newton, Mike Faris, Helen Goodman, and Bob Williams for their constructive, collegial discussions of Appreciative Inquiry and how it might be effectively used in evaluation.

This article is an overview of what the Centre for Learning on Evaluation and Results in Anglophone Africa (CLEAR-AA) is currently learning in its work implementing monitoring and evaluation (ME) capacity strengthening programmes in our partner countries. This article is based on the reflections drawn from the authors’ experiences and the work of CLEAR-AA in strengthening ME systems across the continent. It serves as a contribution to larger ongoing strategic conversations about how to promote evidence-informed decision-making for better development outcomes. The article begins with a discussion on systems broadly and ME systems in particular, with a specific focus on some of the historical roots of the current ways in which ME is defined and implemented in African systems of governance. We continue to discuss the various elements that come into play in establishing and institutionalising ME systems, in particular the ‘ME Market’ and the demand for evidence, where we also challenge the notion of the unidirectional demand and supply chain of evaluation. The institutional architecture within which ME systems operate is next discussed, and how the formal (and informal) laws, policies, boundaries and rules continue to provide some degree of leverage in support of these systems. The article finally addresses two key elements of developing and sustaining ME systems: the role of leadership and developing an evaluative culture. The authors explain why these elements, which often receive less attention than the technical elements in building and strengthening ME systems, carry such weight in sustaining national evaluation systems.

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