Matodzi Amisi

• Master of Arts
• Research Associate at CLEAR-AA

Over the past nine years the Violence Prevention Forum (VPF) has facilitated collaboration and partnerships within and between sectors; maintained ongoing engagement; and influenced policy, practice and funding for violence prevention interventions in South Africa. This policy brief presents findings from three case studies that assessed why resear...

The African Journal in Education and Transformation (AJET) is an open-access, peer-reviewed and multidisciplinary bi-annual Journal offering graduate scholars the opportunity to participate in research output to address the shift from elite to mass participation in higher education and emerging opportunities that make higher education more responsi...

The African Journal in Education and Transformation (AJET) is an open-access, peer-reviewed and multidisciplinary bi-annual Journal offering graduate scholars the opportunity to participate in research output to address the shift from elite to mass participation in higher education and emerging opportunities that make higher education more responsi...

This policy brief shows that interventions can prevent and reduce violence in South Africa. There are however challenges to delivering these programmes at scale. These include limited capacity for implementation, adapting for context, and balancing the need for programmes to be evidence-based while also being responsive to communities' needs. South...

African Journal in Education & Transformation (AJET), ISSN 2788-6379, Volume 2, Edition 2 (Nov 2022)

Background: Voluntary organisations for professional evaluation (VOPEs) have proliferated across the African continent, seeking to contribute to building effective national evaluation systems (NESs) that enhance development planning, implementation and appraisal. Objectives: A study commissioned by the Centre for Learning on Evaluation and Results...

The African Journal in Education and Transformation (AJET), ISSN 2788-6379 is an open-access, peer-reviewed and multidisciplinary bi-annual Journal offering graduate scholars the opportunity to participate in research output. The Journal avails a platform for novice to experienced Researchers to journal detailed accounts of various research project...

Case studies on the use of evidence in African policy processes reveal that knowledge brokers play critical roles as facilitators, linkage agents, capacity builders, and knowledge managers. Yet these roles are often underestimated and under-resourced. Effective knowledge brokers understand internal and external contexts. They harness opportunities...

Background: This article shares lessons from four case studies, documenting experiences of evidence use in different public policies in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Objectives: Most literature on evidence use in Africa focuses either on one form of evidence, that is, evaluations, systematic...

The African Journal in Education and Transformation (AJET), ISSN 2788-6379 is an open-access, peer-reviewed and multidisciplinary bi-annual Journal offering graduate scholars the opportunity to participate in research output. The Journal avails a platform for novice to experienced Researchers to journal detailed accounts of various research project...

The African Journal in Education and Transformation (AJET) is an open-access, peer-reviewed and multidisciplinary bi-annual Journal offering graduate scholars the opportunity to participate in research output to address the shift from elite to mass participation in higher education and emerging opportunities that make higher education more responsi...

The report presents findings from an evidence review of violence prevention interventions implemented in South Africa, and draws on an evidence map published by the Forum in 2019, and additional research. The review summarises the available evidence, with an assessment of quality, and perhaps most importantly, highlights the contextual factors whic...

What do we mean when we speak of preventing violence? This policy brief presents definitions of violence prevention as expressed by children, researchers, non-governmental organisations, government officials, development partners, donor agencies and a private sector partner. These definitions show that preventing violence is a collective, long-term...

Background African countries are developing their monitoring and evaluation policies to systematise, structure and institutionalise evaluations and use of evaluative evidence across the government sector. The pace at which evaluations are institutionalised and systematised across African governments is progressing relatively slowly. Aims and objec...

The African Journal in Education and Transformation (AJET) is an open-access, peer-reviewed and multidisciplinary bi-annual Journal offering graduate scholars the opportunity to participate in research output to address the shift from elite to mass participation in higher education and emerging opportunities that make higher education more responsi...

The African Journal in Education and Transformation (AJET) is an open-access, peer-reviewed and multidisciplinary bi-annual Journal offering graduate scholars the opportunity to participate in research output to address the shift from elite to mass participation in higher education and emerging opportunities that make higher education more responsi...

Background: The need to demonstrate development results has prompted governments across Africa to build systems to generate, supply and use evaluative evidence for policy-informed decision-making, budgeting and programming. National evaluation systems (NESs) are being set up across Africa, together with the processes and other monitoring and evalua...

In 2020, the ISS carried out evaluative research to document the forum’s methods, principles, practices, and impacts. The evaluation may inform the development of a model for building and convening multisectoral dialogue on complex social problems, such as the prevention of violence.

The Violence Prevention Forum is a multisectoral platform that promotes the use of evidence in violence prevention in South Africa. The forum has strengthened relationships between researchers, government, NGOs and development partners. As a result, information can be shared more easily, which has influenced national and provincial policy and pract...

Background: This article is based on a case study research on evidence use in Africa, drawing from four cases to focus on the role of civil society in evidence use. The countries included Benin, South Africa, Kenya and Ghana and sectors included agriculture, violence against women and children, sanitation and wildlife. Objective: The objective of...

This chapter focuses on the use of evidence from the Diagnostic Review of South Africa's response to violence against women and children (VAWC), carried out by the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation and Department of Social Development between 2014 and 2016. The Diagnostic Review provided evidence that government needed to develop a...

Reducing and preventing violence is critical to national development and to achieving the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. This policy brief reviews current expenditure on the criminal justice system and what that spend has achieved. It also looks at spending on violence prevention and shows that while South Africa spends over R126 bi...

This policy brief presents an analysis of six factors that stand in the way of effectively preventing interpersonal violence in South Africa, and suggests how they might be overcome. It is a product of the Dialogue Forum for evidence-based programmes to prevent violence against women and children. The forum is a multi-sectoral group of researchers,...

Conducting meta-reviews of government programmes has become common practice. In South Africa, the national Department of Human Settlements and the national Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation recently commissioned a team to review the extent to which the Housing Subsidy Programme had provided assets to municipalities and the poor an...

The Department of Planning Monitoring and Evaluation together with Department of Social Development evaluated the South African Government response to Violence Against Women and Children. The evaluation assessed 11 departments/institutions.

There is a growing recognition of the complex relationship between evaluation and research, and policy and practice. Policy making is inherently political, and public administration is contingent on various factors, that is budgets, capabilities and systems other than evidence. This has evolved in the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluati...