The Creation of National Networks in Africa

In September 1999, the first conference of the African Evaluation Association (AfrEA) took place in Nairobi, Kenya, with more than 300 participants from 35 countries. The topic of discussion was the "Development of Evaluation Capacities in Africa".

The conference had 6 objectives: - promote the creation of networks and associations of professional evaluators - develop a lasting organization to link the national associations with an African association - revise the evaluation standards of the USA for adoption or adaptation in Africa - create a database of evaluators in Africa - promote contributions for an annotated bibliography of evaluations in Africa - publish the documents of the conference

This conference has accelerated the formation of national evaluation groups in Africa. Kenya formed its own National Association and eight other networks were formed in: the Comoro Islands, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, and Rwanda. After the conference, the focal points for constituting national networks were identified in Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cape Verde, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda.

The second AfrEA Conference took place in Nairobi from 10th to 14th June 2002. Four ReNSE members attended the conference and made presentations at the "Education", "Poverty Reduction Strategy", "Evaluation Capacity Development" and "Agricultural Development Research" Strands.

The third Afrea Conference took place from 1st to 4th December 2004 in Cape Town, South Africa. The Conference was attended by a record number of 482 people from 56 countries and around 250 participants also attended the 10 pre-conference professional development workshops.

For additional information about the creation of national networks in Africa and AfrEA activities, please consult the Afrea website or contact the current Afrea chairperson: