M&E of complex humanitarian and development interventions, in the contexts of a changing world

Ms Amisi is a senior M&E Technical Specialist at the Centers for Learning on Evaluation and Results, Anglophone Africa ( CLEAR-AA). She was a director of evaluations in the Department of Planning Monitoring and Evaluation for 5 years. She has over 10 years’ experience in research and evaluation in the public service.She spent sometime working for the Commission on Gender Equality, a constitutional body in Johannesburg. Here my most exciting work included the National Gender Opinion Survey and working with Political parties to measure achievement of gender parity. From there she worked with the Department of Human Settlements. She was responsible for conducting an managing research and evaluations of the government housing programme. She also did an exciting project on Community of Practice of Housing policy and research units in provinces and local government. This platform created space for sharing knowledge, reflecting on research and implications for policy and addressing capacity issues in research units.

She was involved in developing the South African National Evaluation System and promoting the use of evaluations to support evidence-based policy and decision-making in government. She worked with the Departments of Social Development and Human Settlements.Her area of interest is the production and use of evaluation evidence in violence prevention sector. She has been involved in the institute of Security Studies Dialogue Forum to promote collaboration between Government, Academia and civil society in the generation of evidence of what works to prevent violence against children. She is involved in the Soul City led think-tank to promote gender responsive planning and budgeting.She facilitated the DPME-UCT course for executives in the public service on Evidence Based Policy making.In 2017 she was one of the 25 emerging leaders across Africa who participated in the Building Bridges programme at UCT.

Grace is a Kenyan and a Monitoring and Evaluation practitioner. She holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science from University of Nairobi-Kenya and a Master of Arts in Public Administration from the University of York-United Kingdom. She is studying for a PhD in Social Policy with a focus on reconceptualising the welfare state theory to the Sub-Saharan Africa context to explain evolution of social policy regimes and how different regime configurations have influenced social outcomes over time. She has worked with UNICEF (2001-2004) in information management related roles; with World Food Programme in South Sudan (WFP 2004-2006) and in Kenya (2006-2014) as M&E officer; with WFP in Italy (2014-207) and WFP South Africa (2017 to date) as evaluation Officer. In her current role as the WFP Regional Evaluation Officer, she is supporting WFP country offices across the Southern Africa Region in commissioning, managing and using independent evaluations, and doing so in partnership with Government institutions and other United Nations agencies.