Rooting Evaluation Guidelines in Relational Ethics: Lessons From Africa

Abstract

As global discussions of evaluation standards become more contextually nuanced, culturally responsive conceptions of ethics have not been sufficiently discussed. In academic social research, ethical clearance processes have been designed to protect vulnerable people from harm related to participation in a research project. This article expands the ambit of ethical protection thinking and proposes a relational ethics approach for evaluation practitioners. This centers an analysis of power relations among and within all the different stakeholder groups in order to establish, in a context-specific manner, which stakeholders are vulnerable and in need of protection. The approach also contextualizes the nature of “the public good,” as part of an ethical consideration of interest trade-offs during evaluations. The discussion is informed by our experiences in African contexts and speaks to the “Made in Africa” research agenda but is also relevant to other global contexts where alternatives to “developed country” ontological assumptions about the roles of researchers and participations and the nature of vulnerability are being reconsidered.

From evidence to values-based decision making in African parliaments

“…The Deliberative Democratic Evaluation Approach, detailed in the studies of House and Howe (1999) and House (2015), recognizes the need for evaluators to incorporate the values of all stakeholders in evaluation, as this stands to make the evidence more accurate, just, useful and more used, as the evaluation would include the views, values and interests of all stakeholders. This is in line with the emphasis some Southern evaluation scholars are putting on a relational approach to values in evaluation guidelines (Blaser Mapitsa & Polzer Ngwato, 2019). This is to ensure the values system of the evaluation commissioning organization is balanced with stakeholders who may have less relational power.…”

The effects of coloniality and international development assistance on Made in Africa Evaluation: Implications for a decolonised evaluation agenda

“…This relates to the coloniality of power and highlights the inherent power contestations and values in evaluation processes, which hinge on 'beneficiaries' of evaluations being viewed as more powerless. In contrast, the commissioners and, to a lesser extent, evaluators typically have more power, for example, decision-making power regarding the methods and approaches used in the evaluation (Mapitsa & Ngwato 2020). These power disparities are ever more heightened in the African contexts, where the differences between the haves and the have-nots are more evident.…”

Approaches to embedding indigenous knowledge systems in Made in Africa Evaluations

“…The ethical dimension in this regard, however, must ultimately guarantee and protect the vulnerable. With this in mind, reflections on the debates on contextualised evaluations (Mapitsa & Ngwato 2020) befittingly come into play.…”

“…Hence, clear guidelines are required to be formulated, against references to global guidelines often linked to the Australian Evaluation Association (AEA) and the American Evaluation Association (AmEA). African Evaluation Association adopted the AEG in 2002, and despite being revised in 2006-2007 and 2019, there is a dearth of literature or research about the guidelines (Mapitsa & Ngwato 2020).…”