Background

There is growing recognition of the importance of evidence, particularly evidence from evaluations, in national decision-making and the crucial role of parliamentarians and their support staff in ensuring that evidence-based approaches are used for strengthening oversight, budgeting resource appropriation, legislation, and policy making across all sectors. Parliamentarians and their staff need data and evidence to make decisions that effectively, equitably, and justly allocate resources and meet people’s social and economic needs.  However, they face major technical and political challenges related to the generation and the use of evidence to inform policies.  This challenge is acute in Africa given the dearth of information and analysis about the conditions, problems, and solutions of social and economic development. 

While there is some existing data pointing to the capacity gaps of African parliamentarians in using evidence in legislation and policies, including their M&E and data use skills needs, there is no comprehensive or detailed assessment of their specific challenges and needs or whether and how they currently access and use evidence in legislative drafting, policy formulation, and oversight

Purpose

This project is aimed is to improve access to evidence used by parliamentarians and policy makers in their legislative and policy making work. The activity does not seek to evaluate parliaments and parliamentarians.  Rather, it is about helping elected representatives use data and evidence from evaluation and other sources, to make informed decisions. 

The proposed assessments and analytical activities will generate important insights into the challenges parliamentarians in Africa face when it comes to the generation and uptake of evidence as well as provide them and their staff with guides and tools they need to better access, understand and use evidence. 

 

Research team members

Prof Paul Sarfo-Mensah

Dr Ebenezer Owusu-Addo

Dr Albert Arhin

 

Collaborators

United States Department of Agriculture

University of Rhode Island

USAID