Since Khulisa’s founding in 1993, we’ve actively formed strategic partnerships and participated in local and global networks for increased development effectiveness.

Voluntary Organisations for Professional Evaluation (VOPEs)

In 1999, a group of evaluators formed the African Evaluation Association (AfrEA) in Kenya, serving as a platform for like-minded professionals to advance M&E theory and practice in Africa. It was one of the first steps towards professionalizing M&E on the African continent. In 2004, AfrEA held its conference in South Africa, providing an opportunity for South African-based evaluators to meet and agree on the value of a national M&E Association for South Africa

Khulisa former director Jennifer Bisgard was asked to lead a task team and was ultimately elected the founding Chair of the newly formed South African Monitoring & Evaluation Association (SAMEA) in 2005. In 2007, SAMEA held its first conference in Johannesburg. Several current and former Khulisa staff have served on the SAMEA board since.

Khulisa participated widely at AfrEA and SAMEA Conferences over the years. From 2012 to 2014, Jennifer joined the AfrEA Board as the South African representative and General Secretary and represented AfrEA on the Board of the International Organization for Cooperation in Evaluation (IOCE) from 2013 to 2016.

Khulisa staff have also belonged to the American Evaluation Association since 1995 with directors and staff frequently participating in the annual AEA conference and serving on various AEA committees and Topical Interest Groups. Additionally, Khulisa US staff are engaged with the Washington Evaluators Group.

Global evaluation initiatives

Khulisa has been an avid supporter of initiatives that advance the M&E profession globally.

We are an active advocate of various EvalPartners initiatives to promote evaluation practice and VOPEs across the world. Three such initiatives include support of EvalYouth, EvalYear 2015 and the Global Parliamentarians Forum for Evaluation. For the latter, Khulisa partnered with USAID’s African Strategies for Health (ASH) to produce a communication campaign in which Members of the Pan African Parliament pledged their support to in-country evaluation.

Through the ASH project, Khulisa director Mary Pat Selvaggio and nutrition specialist Edna Berhane edited a special health edition of the African Evaluation Journal (AEJ), AfrEA’s peer-reviewed academic journal. Khulisa’s Senior Vice President, Mark Bardini, is an Editorial Board Member of AEJ.

Partnerships & memberships

Khulisa has been a member of the Small Business Association of International Companies (SBIAC) based in Washington, DC since 2016 and participates in many US Small Business Administration (SBA) and SBIAC events to act as an advocate for small businesses.

In 2019, Khulisa embarked on a strategic partnership approach by formalising networks with various organisations, including small businesses, to complement our service offering. Read more about these partnerships here.

In the US, for example, Khulisa and Cardno Emerging Markets, one of our partners, are engaged in the SBA Mentor-Protégé Program.

In South Africa, Khulisa is in a partnership with Dimension Data to provide large-scale digital data monitoring services to the South African public and private sector. We’ve also been working with BRIDGE on managing its education M&E Communities of Practice (CoP) since 2018, in collaboration with SAMEA.

Lastly, Khulisa is growing its expertise in impact investing and joined the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) in 2019. Director Peter Capozza attended the GIIN’s fourth annual investor forum in Amsterdam.