What’s Working in Africa | Twende Mbele
Twende Mbele at 10 | A decade of African government peer learning and evaluation
Twende Mbele is celebrating ten years of bringing African governments together to strengthen monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems through peer learning, shared tools and cooperation. Established in 2016 by Benin, South Africa and Uganda, the partnership helps governments learn from one another and improve how they use evidence to inform public decisions.
Its name means “moving forward together” in Swahili. What began with three governments has grown into a network of ten African countries, with Côte d’Ivoire, Malawi, Nigeria and Tanzania joining in 2026. The partnership now connects public institutions across West, East and Southern Africa, creating opportunities for officials to exchange experiences and learn from approaches developed in other countries.
Over the past decade, Twende Mbele has supported government institutions through study tours, peer exchanges, joint activities and practical guidance. Its work spans eight areas, including rapid evaluations, parliamentary oversight, gender-responsive evaluation, civil society participation and the use of evaluation findings in government planning and budgeting.
One example is the partnership’s work on rapid evaluations. Governments often need information about the performance of public programmes while decisions about their implementation or funding are still being made. However, conventional evaluations can take months or years to complete, making it difficult for officials to obtain findings within the time available.
In 2018, Twende Mbele began piloting a rapid evaluation methodology in Niger and South Africa. The approach is designed to answer specific evaluation questions within shorter periods, helping public institutions obtain evidence that can inform decisions about ongoing programmes. The partnership has continued to develop this work, publishing an updated practical guide in 2025 to support officials in commissioning, conducting and using rapid evaluations.
Peer learning has also enabled government officials to examine how evaluation systems operate in other African countries. Through study tours and exchanges, participating institutions can compare their methods, discuss common challenges and identify approaches that may be suitable for their own administrative contexts.
In October 2025, Ghana hosted its inaugural Evaluation Week with Twende Mbele. The event brought together government officials and evaluation practitioners to discuss how evaluation could become a more established part of public administration. It also provided an opportunity to share experiences of strengthening national evaluation systems.
After ten years of cooperation, Twende Mbele has accumulated a substantial collection of reports, guidelines and country experiences. As part of its anniversary activities, the partnership has introduced an interactive Knowledge Hub that allows users to explore publications and M&E milestones from participating countries through a digital map.
The Hub contains 257 publications and an AI research assistant that helps visitors search the evidence library. Twende Mbele’s wider collection includes more than 400 knowledge resources, providing government officials, researchers and evaluation practitioners with access to methods and experiences developed across the partnership.
The Knowledge Hub also offers a way to examine how countries have approached similar challenges in different institutional settings. Users can explore country-specific experiences, identify relevant guidance and draw on resources produced through the partnership’s activities.
What can the Africa Evidence Network (AEN) evidence ecosystem learn from Twende Mbele?
Twende Mbele’s experience offers an example of how African governments can work together to strengthen their capacity to commission, conduct and use evaluations. Its approach places government institutions at the centre of peer learning, allowing officials to exchange practical experience and consider methods developed in other countries.
For AEN members, the partnership provides opportunities to learn from government-led approaches to evidence use, particularly how evaluation methods can be adapted to different institutional contexts and incorporated into public administration.
