Background: The Made in Africa Evaluation (MAE) movement calls for evaluation theories and approaches grounded in African philosophies and indigenous knowledge systems. Although African proverbs contain evaluative wisdom, few methodologies systematically transform this wisdom into evaluation philosophy, frameworks and approaches. Objectives: This article introduces the Extract–Learn–Orient (ELO) methodology, a culturally grounded process for identifying, interpreting and synthesising evaluative and philosophical insights embedded in indigenous proverbs. Method: The ELO emerged from reflection on developing the Swahili evaluation approach. Drawing on indigenous research methodologies, qualitative content analysis, philosophical hermeneutics and interpretive evaluation theory, it comprises three phases: (1) Extract, identifying culturally legitimate proverbs; (2) Learn, applying Interpretive Evaluation Mapping to generate evaluative insights; and (3) Orient, synthesising these insights into evaluation philosophy and practical guidance. Results: Applying ELO to Swahili proverbs generated insights into inquiry, evidence, participation, accountability, experiential knowledge, ethical judgement and contextual sensitivity. These were synthesised into ontological, epistemological, axiological and methodological beliefs, together with culturally grounded understandings of evaluation’s meaning, rationale and purpose, demonstrating that indigenous proverbs are sources of evaluative reasoning that can inform evaluation theory and practice. Conclusion: The ELO provides a systematic and transferable methodology for transforming indigenous proverbial wisdom into evaluation knowledge, strengthening the methodological foundations of Made in Africa Evaluation. Contribution: The ELO offers a replicable pathway through which indigenous communities can develop culturally grounded evaluation philosophies, frameworks and approaches, advancing methodological innovation, epistemic justice and the decolonisation of evaluation.
Background: Made in Africa Evaluation (MAE) has emerged as a response to the dominance of Euro-Western epistemologies in evaluation theory and practice, particularly within African development contexts shaped by externally driven funding and accountability regimes. While MAE has played a critical role in challenging epistemic injustice and advancing decolonial critique, much of the discourse remains anchored in oppositional framings of the Global North and Global South. Objectives: This article argues that the future of Africa-rooted evaluation lies not only in resisting Western dominance but also in advancing a constructive, principled, and globally engaged practice of evaluation from Africa. It contends that a continued fixation on binaries risks limiting MAE’s transformative potential. Method: Drawing on MAE scholarship, African Evaluation Principles, Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS), and relational African philosophies such as ubuntu and ukama, the article critically examines prevailing decolonial arguments and proposes a shift towards an African relational evaluation orientation. Results: The article advances three interrelated principles – integrity, inclusion, and reciprocity – as foundational to evaluation from Africa. These principles reposition accountability, ethics, participation, and benefit-sharing at the centre of evaluation practice, while remaining open to global knowledge exchange. Conclusion: By moving beyond ‘Made in Africa’ as a defensive identity marker, the article offers a forward-looking framework for evaluation from Africa. Contribution: This article contributes substantively to global evaluation theory and practice, grounded in African values yet connected to the world.
Background: The Made in Africa Evaluation (MAE) framework has emerged as one of the most significant intellectual and institutional responses to the dominance of Western evaluation paradigms on the African continent, yet the question of what is distinctively ‘African’ about it remains undertheorised and contested in the evaluation literature. Objectives: This article interrogates what is distinctively ‘African’ about the MAE by analysing the philosophical, epistemological, methodological, institutional and political dimensions through which MAE asserts its African identity, tracing its evolution from its inception in 1999 through to the most current scholarly contributions of 2025–2026. Method: A qualitative interpretive literature review oriented towards critical synthesis was conducted, drawing on systematic narrative synthesis and thematic analysis and guided throughout by a critical postcolonial meta-theoretical lens. Results: Made in Africa Evaluation’s Africanness is grounded in Ubuntu philosophy, African indigenous knowledge systems, the African relational and Afrocentric paradigms, communal ways of knowing, and the institutional architecture of African Evaluation Association and the African Peer Review Mechanism. Unresolved tensions persist between universalist and contextualist epistemologies, theory and practice, and local ownership and global relevance. Conclusion: Made in Africa Evaluation constitutes an assertion of Africa’s right and intellectual capacity to define, conduct and own evaluation on its own terms, enriching both African evaluation practice and the global evaluation enterprise. Contribution: This article provides the first comprehensive, multi-dimensional framework synthesising the philosophical, epistemological, methodological, institutional and political dimensions of MAE’s African identity, advancing the theoretical foundations of the MAE discourse.
Background: Qualitative approaches are widely applied across disciplines, yet their role in programme evaluation in Africa, where evidence is critical for accountability and learning, remains underexplored. Objectives: This study examines how trustworthiness strategies are reported in peer-reviewed qualitative evaluation studies in African contexts, and how reporting varies across methodological orientations, thematic focus areas and Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS) use. Method: We conducted a scoping review of 83 Web of Science (WoS)-indexed evaluation studies in African contexts, applying directed content analysis to map trustworthiness-reporting strategies and multiple correspondence analysis to examine variation. Results: Findings reveal a consistent pattern: the WoS-indexed evaluation studies are most transparent about structurally visible methodological elements, notably thick description and data collection, while trustworthiness strategies that demonstrate deeper analytic or relational accountability are systematically under-reported. The corpus shows that strategies requiring greater methodological accountability, such as analytic details, reflexivity and sampling, are rarely comprehensive. Participant engagement strategies (e.g. prolonged engagement) and analytic mechanisms (e.g. audit trails) are particularly underused. Multiple correspondence analysis identified three clusters: (1) comprehensive reporting in health and standalone qualitative studies, (2) partial engagement strategies in CAQDAS-supported studies and (3) limited reporting in agriculture and environment evaluations. Conclusion: This study contributes empirical grounding to qualitative evaluation practice in Africa, showing that reporting is structured by sectoral context and technological adoption more than by methodological orientation, with strategies critical to interpretive accountability remaining under-reported. Contribution: Addressing the gaps requires capacity building that engages evaluators, journals, professional bodies and funders with the epistemological commitments of qualitative inquiry, not merely its reporting conventions.
