The 2022 Evidence to Action Conference was convened by the International Centre for Evaluation and Development (ICED) in partnership with the Office of the Prime Minister – Directorate of Monitoring and Evaluation, Uganda Evaluation Association; College of Health Sciences, Makerere University, Uganda; and Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Market, Risk and Resilience of the University of California at Davis, Campbell Collaboration; Innovation for Poverty Action; and United States International University-Africa, Kenya and other partners. It was conducted from 26th to 30th September, 2022 in Kampala, Uganda.
The need for more and better evidence from research and evaluation of development programs has never been more crucial as Africa directs its efforts towards accomplishing its commitment to the Africa Union’s Agenda 2063, and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Agenda 2030 during and beyond the COVID 19 Pandemic. With the current context and the challenges facing the world and compounded by the conflict in Ukraine and the food shortages/insecurity as well as the rising fuel prices and shortages, sound evidence is essential to inform policy making, development actions, and citizenry perception of the impact of the agendas.
This year’s event, shines a spotlight on the conduct of practitioners and professionals in Monitoring and Evaluation, dwelling on learned experiences of adapting and innovating evaluation practice for evidence-based decision making within and beyond the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic and the post COVID recovery.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the post COVID recovery challenges practitioners and professionals in monitoring and evaluation to focus direction on emerging lessons from the available data at local, regional, and global levels which would enable more effective operational planning and budgeting to support recovery plans and evidence-based policy making that would positively impact on livelihoods choices among communities.
The Evidence to Action 2022 Conference theme is premised on the understanding that evidence-based research and evaluation findings exist that have huge potential for positively impacting Africa’s policy decision-making and action to drive the realization of Africa Union’s Agenda 2063 and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Agenda 2030 . It seeks to reimagine evaluation and exploring ways to make it even more functional amidst the Covid-19 pandemic and post COVID Recovery. The conference theme has sub-themes have been chosen to allow for a range of both thematic/sectoral perspectives as well as in depth discussions on knowledge brokering and evidence generation.