EXPRESSION OF INTEREST (EOI) FOR CAPACITY BUILDING IN IMPACT EVALUATION IN AFRICA, 2024 86 views0 applications

Introduction

The African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) is committed to producing scientific evidence relevant to the African context, developing strong African research leadership, and promoting evidence-informed decision-making while addressing systemic challenges that have stifled Africa’s path to self-sufficiency in Research and Development. Our vision of transforming lives in Africa through research,builds on 20 years of experience in evidence generation, and promoting its use to guide decision-making for Africa’s development, through the strategic objectives of our 2022-2026 Strategic Plan namely:

1. to generate scientific knowledge aligned to local and international development agendas that affect health and development in Africa,
2. to develop capacities to strengthen the research ecosystem in Africa and contribute to the development and implementation of a blueprint for Africa’s self-sufficiency in R&D,
3. to use research evidence and engage policy actors for transformative change, and
4. to strengthen operational efficiencies in systems and processes for maximum programmatic impact.

Our research program agenda consists of four themes:

1. Human Developmentwhose focus is on inclusive policies and practices for early childhood development, education and youth empowerment systems in Africa;
2. Health and Well-beingwhose focus is on effective intervention strategies and policies to promote equitable health and well-being of all people in Africa;
3. Population Dynamics and Urbanizationwhose focus is to generate evidence in urbanization, fertility, and aging and their implications for developing sustainable and resilient cities; and
4. Data Science and Evaluationwhose focus is to will promote the field of measurement through maximizing the power of data for population and health research, and lead in exploring opportunities for the field of impact/program evaluation for purposes of evidence generation for decision-making across all of APHRC’s programs.

Motivation

Within the African continent, several country-level development interventions and projects remain unevaluated for both known and unknown reasons that range from a lack of resources to conduct and evaluation to a capacity inadequacies in IE. APHRC recognizes a need to conduct country-level rigorous IE of development interventions in order to inform policy decisions.

Description of EOI

Under APHRC’s flagship program on Enhancing Impact Evaluation Capacity in Africa (ENICA),we aim to engage different institutions, organizations, and ministries in Africa interested in evaluating their own programs. The aim is to support such institutions, organizations, or ministries to utilize advanced and rigorous IE approaches in evaluating sub-national or national level programs in order to inform policy, planning, programming and/or decision-making. Under this EOI, APHRC will IE training and mentorship to institutions, organizations, and ministries through a hands-on experiential training involving a series of activities staggered over 3 months. First, there will be a 2-3-day intensive instructional IE course led by APHRC IE experts. This will be followed by a mentorship program in which interested institutional staff teams of 3-4 members will meet virtually for about 2 hours per week for supportive engagement by a team of 2-3 APHRC IE staff in order for such teams to develop policy-oriented evidence products, preferably a working paper along with a policy brief. The EOI can be broad and may cover areas such as such as agriculture, health, water, infrastructure, energy, education, and economics among others. EOI from institutions, organizations, and ministries that demonstrate possession of large-scale observational, administrative, programmatic, experimental, or routinely collected datasets will be prioritized.

APHRC might support such institutions, organizations, and ministries to disseminate their findings through conferences, roundtable discussions, and seminars among others.

Eligibility

Open to all institutions, organizations, and ministries in Africa.

Required

Interested entities (institutions, organizations, and ministries) should apply expressing interest, describing the sector, institution or ministry, and country, including the project (s) to be evaluated.