Weak monitoring and evaluation (M&E) capacity in Africa is a persistent challenge that has faced development agencies, foundations, for-profit and not-for-profit organizations alike, as they seek to monitor and evaluate their programs and projects. M&E capacity challenges in Africa are driven by many factors, including: 1) insufficient numbers of trained and experienced African M&E experts; and 2) an existing system in which the users of evaluation services mostly source experts from outside the Africa continent.

Traditional evaluation methods begin with questions. A question is asked, an evaluation is designed around the questions, data is collected and analyzed, and the original questions are answered. Data science doesn’t require an initial question. Often data science is about exploring the data, making intelligent understanding of it, and looking for interesting patterns and relationships without constraints of initial questions. Data scientists leverage computer programs and models to link, integrate, and analyze large amounts of data across disparate datasets. These used to require expensive systems and specialized skills. Cloud-based data technologies have made data science much more accessible than ever before.

Having spent the last 10 years working in the philanthropic sector, I am inspired by the emergence of many new private philanthropies, which are expanding the pool of resources available to tackle persistent social problems that plague the poor and disadvantaged globally. While there is an increase in philanthropic dollars, there is also a noticeable tendency for new and old grantmakers to work consistently with a limited, and well-known set of organizations to develop and implement programs and interventions.

The ever-increasing importance of impact investing as a tool for combating poverty and underdevelopment is greeted with both excitement and skepticism. Broadly speaking, impact investing is the use of capital investments to achieve sound financial returns as wells as positive social and/ or environmental impact(s). Advocates of impact investing see the opportunity to unlock massive amounts of capital to invest in solving all types of social and environmental challenges globally.