Africa Evidence Week 2024 is now in full swing!

This year it is a virtual celebration of African Evidence-Informed Decision-Making (EIDM) and the decision-makers who make it a reality. Taking place virtually, Africa Evidence Week (AfEW) 2024 is a collection of digital content shared from across Africa, ranging from live sessions and pre-recorded content, to live X chats and blogs. The week’s sessions will be exploring unique and innovative approaches to bridging the gap between research evidence in policy making, and building capacity and strengthening EIDM in Africa. You can also expect high-profile speakers like Cochrane, a global collaboration of researchers, health professionals, students, and consumers that produces evidence addressing worldwide health challenges

The history of Africa Evidence Week

The very first Africa Evidence Week took place in 2019, launched by the AEN as an initiative to focus a regional evidence week on African EIDM leaders.

It was initially conceived by the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) – fast forward a few years later, and evidence weeks have become a popular feature of the international EIDM community,  with country, regional, and continent-wide evidence weeks taking place across the globe. The common thread, that runs through all these events, is advocacy for evidence and its use in decision-making to ensure that policies are based on context-relevant and rigorous data.

AfEW 2024

The aim of this year’s event is to showcase and promote the state of EIDM in the African continent, highlighting specifically the contribution of young and emerging leaders in African EIDM.

Here are a few of the many interesting events taking place over the next week! Our editorial team, led by R2A, will be publishing a handful of blogs on them over the coming weeks. 

• Western Cape Government Provincial Data Office (PDO), on 20 August @ 7am GMT:  The  PDO will be hosting a webinar which is a ‘Time to Talk Data’ platform to transform capabilities across our data and evidence communities. This session will be particularly interesting for data and evidence stakeholders.
•  African Center for Equitable Development (ACED), on 21 August @ 12pm GMT: How do we map evidence ecosystems for innovative and tailored interventions to improve evidence use in policy and practice? This session will offer an opportunity to share the lessons learned from profiling evidence ecosystems in six Francophone West African countries.
• The African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP) on 22 August @ 12pm GMT: Accelerating SDGs through advancing gender equity and inclusion in Evidence Informed Policy processes, sharing experiences and reflections. If you’re interested in advancing evidence-informed policy;  gender equity and inclusion in decision-making; and achieving the SDGs, be sure you do not miss this session!

Look out also for the social media storm and TikTok video challenge being led by PACKS Africa!

How do I attend the virtual sessions?

You can access the sessions and further information about each via this link here.

You can also follow AEN on social media @Africa_evidence.