'WHOSE AGENDA IS IT?': REFRAMING EQUITY AND JUSTICE IN EVALUATION IN AFRICA

Abstract Information: Amid critical debates on how to center equity and justice in evaluative work. This paper argues that evaluators’ interrogation of the question ‘‘whose agenda is it?’’ in framing equity and justice in CSA programming and evaluation is essential for assessing the pursuit of social justice. This paper argues that leveraging Agenda and Framing Analyses as powerful tools for sense-making and giving challenges evaluators, stakeholders, and donor biases in understanding the underlying historical and cultural framing of development interventions in evaluations. It presents the results of a narrative review of studies analyzing the framing of climate equity and justice in adaptation interventions in Africa. The study reveals that evaluators rarely engage in a process of sense-making and sense-giving through interrogation of cultural and contextual framings of problems definitions (issue framing, values & ideologies), political dynamics (i.e interests, power & ideas), and influence of policy actors outside the usual suspects (actors, policy networks & epistemic communities), necessary for the integration of equity and justice of evaluative work.

Relevance Statement: Climate change has been placed as one of the urgent needs on the development and evaluation agenda. This paper argues that evaluators’ interrogation of the question ‘‘whose agenda is it?’’ in framing equity and justice in CSA programming and evaluation is essential for assessing the pursuit of social justice. It provides more nuanced and important considerations for rethinking CSA programming and conduct of evaluations, necessary for centering social justice. This paper leverages Agenda and Framing analyses as powerful tools for sense-making and challenging evaluator, stakeholders, and donor biases and cognitive dissonance in understanding the underlying historical and cultural framing of development interventions in evaluations. It tells a different story using narrative review to unpack the colonial and neo-colonial acts of inequity and injustice using a critical constructivist lens. The chapter argues the need for more critical thinking in understanding and paying attention to reinforcing and reproducing problematic narratives, and values embedded in the design of interventions.