Welcome to the Pan-African Collective for Evidence (PACE)! We are a non-profit organisation that specialises in supporting evidence-informed policy-making across Africa. Our vision is to see a world free of poverty. We work to unlock the full potential of evidence capacities, evidence communities, and evidence synthesis to build institutionalised evidence-to-policy systems that have a real-world impact on development and transformation. PACE works through a partnership model and hosts the largest Africa-focused evidence-informed decision-making network, the Africa Evidence Network.
We deliver responsive evidence services and support systems-level change for evidence-use via a co-production approach with African stakeholders. Our projects range from building and supporting African evidence communities to curating and translating data and evidence for policy-making. We also support the sharing of evidence capacities through a range of modalities from mentoring, communities of practice, training courses, and embedded evidence advisory services.
PACE serves as the host to the AEN by providing the secretariat for the Network. The AEN is a broad community of over 4,000 diverse people who share a vision to see an end to poverty and inequality in Africa. The Network’s mission is to work with others to contribute to this vision by increasing the use of evidence in decision-making. The Network is pan-African, open to all who live and work on the continent. You can learn more about the AEN and its services here.
The REAP project is developing and testing a fully online platform for capacity support to evidence units in Africa to enable them to deliver evidence for policy within their contexts. REAP supports five diverse units to deliver effective evidence services to their governments via a scalable model for online capacity development which integrates a range of approaches, including a robust monitoring, evaluation and learning process to inform future development of the platform. Co-ordinated by the PACE in partnership with eBASE Africa, REAP is implemented in five African countries: Cameroon, Chad, Kenya, Niger, South Africa.
Across the continent, emerging evidence-informed decision-making (EIDM) leaders have been raising their voice to play a more active role in finding solutions for the challenges facing African countries through the better use of data and evidence for decision-making. The Africa Evidence Youth League (AEYL) brings together these emerging leaders and provides a platform for them to share ideas, build connections, and take part in mentoring, career- and institution-building activities. The AEYL is centered around burning issues which were identified by emerging leaders and in phase 1 will focus on education, bringing together emerging evidence education leaders from all around the continent to a facilitated community of practice and in-depth EIDM mentoring programme.
We systematically gather, organise, and synthesise scientific and experiential knowledge on evidence-informed policy and practice (EIPM) to understand and be able to offer evidence-backed interventions to bolster evidence use in decision-making. Our work provides a comprehensive overview of primary evidence about what works to support evidence-informed decision-making, and aims to translate this knowledge into practical advice for policymakers. This research is crucial for equitable policy distribution, heightened transparency, and optimal resource use and this body of work supports LMIC governments that are already investing in this evidence-based approach to policymaking.
This body of work aims to support evidence-informed decision-making (EIDM) and implementation in Africa by understanding how best to assess the impact of interventions to support EIDM. We are building a body of evidence that will allow decision-makers to reliably assess and compare the effectiveness of different EIDM interventions across contexts. We focus on interventions that support evidence-use for decision-making and implementation. Our work has uncovered over 400 indicators of evidence-use for decisions and implementation. All these indicators are displayed in an interactive Prezi here:
The gender and inclusion portfolio at PACE is premised on the understanding that since Evidence Informed Decision Making (EIDM) uses the best available evidence to implement more effective policies and interventions in the fight against poverty and inequality; EIDM should therefore be sensitive to the needs and concerns of the most marginalized in society who are usually at the receiving end of these policies or interventions. As part of this portfolio, we therefore produce gender related work such developing an evidence map on the National Strategic Plan on Gender Based Violence and Femicide in South Africa. We also work on assessing the extent to which evidence is sensitive to gender and inclusion, using different gender and inclusion tools.
The Youth Employment Evidence and Insights Hub is a pan-African consortium hosted by PACE and composed of key organisations from across and beyond Africa. Together, we are working in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation to support the delivery of their Young Africa Works Strategy, which seeks to enable 30 million young people in Africa, especially young women, to secure dignified and fulfilling employment. Youth unemployment is desperately high across the continent. Through the integration of local and living evidence, and youth voices, the Hub is supporting the Mastercard Foundation in making evidence-informed decisions to help millions of young people in the African Continent find a pathway out of poverty.
The Digital Gender-inclusive Tools for Evidence Use (DG-Tools) project is a partnership led by the Pan-African Collective of Evidence (PACE) in South Africa and the Centre for Rapid Evidence Synthesis (ACRES) in Uganda. Together, we are exploring how digital tools can be integrated in data and evidence creation, mobilization, and use. The emphasis of DG Tool is developing tools to support knowledge brokers in their work to enhance decision-makers’ use of evidence. To this end, we are innovating digital solutions to develop more timely, effective, and equitable pathways for evidence to action and to inform decision-making for development impact. We will create a series of testable pilot programs to design, test, and evaluate how digital technology can be integrated in the data and evidence creation to use pathway and make recommendations for further investment of scale. In the initial two years pilot phase (2024 and 2025), DG Tool is focussing on gender policy decision-making in Uganda, Ethiopia, and South Africa.
We develop and co-produce with partners a variety of products to support evidence-informed policy-making (EIPM). This often includes the curation and mobilisation of existing bodies of evidence. Collectively, our team has conducted over 80 of such policy-relevant evidence synthesis products. We also maintain a database of over 200 evidence capacity resources and offer short courses on a variety of EIPM topics. Our team at the Africa Evidence Network provides match-making and partnership-building in addition to a range of EIPM communication products such as the monthly #AfricaEvidence newsletter.
Managing Researcher and Gender & Evidence Lead
Programme Officer: Enhancing Evidence Capacities
Stakeholders Management & Community of Practices
NPC # 2020/228212/08 | NPO # 290-999
Workshop 17 Firestation, 16 Baker Street, Rosebank, Johannesburg, South Africa
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