Decolonizing and Indigenizing Evaluation Practice in Africa

Toward African Relational Evaluation Approaches

Abstract

Efforts at making evaluation culturally relevant have become central to evaluation discourses globally. However, global attempts at culturally responsive practice have not succeeded in incorporating African voices. This article discusses African perspectives on decolonization and indigenization of evaluation. It further provides a description of an African relational evaluation paradigm as a basis for originating evaluation practices and theories rooted in African world views, and provides examples of evaluation studies that illustrate relational evaluation approaches. It makes claims for an African evaluation tree metaphor that features approaches to evaluation in Africa by African theorists.