150: Disrupting Paradigms for Transformative Change: Nuances of Engaging Indigenous Pastoralist Communities through the Intersection of Made-in-Africa and Culturally Responsive Evaluation

For a successfully engagement of indigenous pastoralist communities for transformative evaluation, the evaluator requires a deep understanding of the social structures, cultural dynamics, and the spoken and unspoken lived realities. The evaluator disrupted the conventional evaluation paradigms, applying an approach necessitating the inclusion of community gatekeepers and cultural knowledge keepers, who serve as custodians of indigenous wisdom. By fostering shared leadership, the evaluator bridged the power asymmetries and ensured a culturally grounded insights shape decision-making.
Methods applied included participatory and observational methods such as storytelling, ethnography, observations, and reflective dialogues. This enabled more nuanced, contextually relevant data collection. The intersection of indigenous, Made-in-Africa, and Culturally Responsive Evaluation ensured that evaluations centre indigenous voices, embrace intersectionality, and drive locally owned transformation. This abstract shares strategies for meaningfully engaging the communities, illustrating how leadership, relational, adaptive, and decolonized evaluation approaches can disrupt extractive practices and catalyze sustainable transformation in complex settings.

Eddah Karijo