ABSTRACT

This book asks how governments in Africa can use evidence to improve their policies and programmes, and ultimately, to achieve positive change for their citizens. Looking at different evidence sources across a range of contexts, the book brings policy makers and researchers together to uncover what does and doesn’t work and why.

Case studies are drawn from five countries and the ECOWAS (west African) region, and a range of sectors from education, wildlife, sanitation, through to government procurement processes. The book is supported by a range of policy briefs and videos intended to be both practical and critically rigorous. It uses evidence sources such as evaluations, research synthesis and citizen engagement to show how these cases succeeded in informing policy and practice. The voices of policy makers are key to the book, ensuring that the examples deployed are useful to practitioners and researchers alike.

This innovative book will be perfect for policy makers, practitioners in government and civil society, and researchers and academics with an interest in how evidence can be used to support policy making in Africa.

The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003007043, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

chapter 1|12 pages

Introduction to the book

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chapter 3|20 pages

Using evidence in Africa

A framework to assess what works, how and why
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chapter 5|17 pages

Using evaluations to inform policy and practice in a government department

The case of the Department of Basic Education in South Africa
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chapter 6|23 pages

Use of evidence in a complex social programme

Case of an evaluation of the state’s response to violence against women and children in South Africa
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chapter 8|19 pages

Rapidly responding to policy queries with evidence

Learning from Rapid Response Services in Uganda
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chapter 10|19 pages

Parliament and public participation in Kenya

The case of the Wildlife Conservation and Management Act 2013
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