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Prof Ian Goldman

Ia Goldman_001.jpg

I have been asked to stand for the Board of SAMEA. I am now freelance having left DPME in July 2018, but working closely with CLEAR-AA and the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance at UCT.

In terms of my experience: •

  • I have 42 years of experience and expertise in national, provincial and local government, with NGOs as well as in the private sector; 
  • Strong experience in the development of M&E systems, leading the development of the national evaluation system in South Africa from 2011-2018 (through DPME); 
  • Experience of M&E in Africa and more widely through being the founder Chair of Twende Mbele, a partnership of African governments promoting M&E, professional experience of working in/with 19 countries, and currently working with 10+ governments on embedding evaluations in their reporting on the SDGs; 
  • Practitioner and more recent academic experience; 
  • Strong facilitation skills and an empowering and adaptive approach to management and governance; 
  • Experience of membership of 11 boards (one current, 3ie); 
  • Wide experience of fundraising from bilateral and private donors and government.

I continue as a practitioner, supporting African governments as well as the W Cape government on M&E. Some of my recent practitioner work since 2018 has included:

  • Undertaking an evaluation of UNICEF’s work in Venezuela;
  • Facilitating development of a national M&E policy for Ghana;
  • Developing a guideline on rapid evaluation and running remote training in W Cape, and designing face to face training for Benin, which was conducted by a local facilitator;
  • Being one of the leads on Nigeria’s 2020 Voluntary National Review (VNR) on the SDGs, including ensuring that evaluations were used to inform the discussion on bottlenecks and how to move forward. This is now an international example used in training;
  • Developing a guide for UNICEF (now translated into French, Spanish and Portuguese) and training and supporting 10 African countries per year preparing to do their VNRs; Page 2 of 3
  • Supporting W Cape Department of the Premier on evaluation and evidence systems since 2018.

I also have an academic portfolio with Wits and UCT:

  • Researching and writing as principle investigator along with Mine Pabari of a book on evidence use by African governments published this month (Using Evidence in Policy and Practice – lessons from Africa)
  • Since 2019 publishing papers on the evaluation of South Africa’s national evaluation system (Africa Evaluation Journal), on the Impact of Impact Evaluation (UNU-WIDER), and just out on Evidence-informed policy and practice: The role and potential of civil society (Africa Evaluation Journal)
  • Teaching a module on Planning, M&E on a Masters in Development Policy and Practice at UCT, supervising Masters students and now supervising two PhDs
  • Teaching at IPDET in 2019 and 2020, and DETPA from 2018.

I have been a SAMEA member since 2011, through DPME, and latterly through CLEAR-AA, and have actively supported the organisation of conferences since 2011, as well as being instrumental in funding SAMEA while at DPME, and ensuring a partnership agreement between DPME and SAMEA. We also ran join projects with SAMEA (e.g. on professionalisation, undertaken by Donna Podems).