Africa LEEPS (Learning together to advance Evidence and Equity in Policymaking to achieve the SDGs)

Governments need evidence to address the complex challenges they face, including addressing gender and other social inequities that undermine the well-being of citizens and slow progress towards sustainable development goals in all sectors. Africa LEEPS will strengthen the use of evidence in policymaking, helping countries in sub-Saharan Africa advance equitable and gender-transformative solutions for progress towards the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

The Challenge

To achieve progress towards the fast-approaching 2030 deadline for the SDGs, there is heightened urgency for African countries to prioritize development priorities and policies that are guided by principles of equity and supported with a robust evidence base to address specific needs and circumstances. This will require strengthened research, decision-making, and knowledge brokering capabilities and new strategies and structures to incentivize consistent use of evidence in policymaking with attention to equity at all stages of the process. These capacities are critical to ensuring that policymakers have access to timely, high-quality, and relevant evidence to inform decision-making processes.

While many low- and lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) in Africa have made advancements in producing and using evidence to inform decision-making, progress has been uneven, faster in sectors like health while slower and fragmented in others, and not well documented. And while there is growing attention to placing equity at the center of policies, many countries face challenges in integrating gender considerations in the policymaking process – from agenda setting, to policy formulation, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation.

The Opportunity

The Africa LEEPS Partnership aims to strengthen knowledge translation – the synthesis, dissemination, and exchange of evidence – in sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on promoting gender equity at all stages of the policymaking process. The partnership brings together leading evidence organizations from across Africa to learn from each other, exchange knowledge and experiences, and jointly problem solve as they strengthen evidence-informed policymaking to accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Africa LEEPS is piloting interventions to make local evidence for priority SDGs readily available to policymakers and testing different ways to institutionalize and support consistent use of evidence in policymaking. Partnership initiatives are designed to support knowledge translation efforts across different SDG priorities including health, environment and climate change, human capital development, and governance, documenting how these efforts are influencing policy or program change, and building an evidence base for the most effective approaches.

Technical capacity strengthening and policy engagement activities are led by three initiatives: the Centre d’Excellence Evidence Policy Action established by the African Center for Equitable Development (ACED)1, the East African Regional Evidence Synthesis Initiative established by the Centre for Rapid Evidence Synthesis (ACRES)2 and Alliance for Evidence and Equity in Policy-making in Africa established by the African Institute for Policy Development (AFIDEP)3. Each initiative is developing and testing different approaches for promoting equitable use of evidence in policymaking with a focus on strengthening capacity and building vibrant country-level evidence networks.

R4D’s Work

As the engagement and learning coordinator for Africa LEEPS, Results for Development (R4D) coordinates learning activities including webinars, workshops and cross-cutting technical working groups (see below), develops and implements communication strategies, and documents stories of change, key insights and lessons learned from partnership activities.

R4D facilitates three partnership-wide working groups: Communications and Knowledge Management, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL), and Gender. The working groups bring together partner organizations to engage on cross-cutting topics of interest – sharing practices and approaches, brainstorming strategies to shared challenges, collaborating in developing tools and knowledge products to support their activities, and learning together from external experts.