Ian Goldman

Ian is an Advisor on Evaluation and Evidence Systems at CLEAR Anglophone Africa at the University of Witwatersrand, and an Adjunct Professor with the University of Cape Town.

Ian has worked for 40 years on issues of rural development, decentralization, sustainable livelihoods approaches, community-driven development, and evidence-based policy-making and implementation, applying the disciplines of planning, evaluation, research and action-learning. He has worked in 20 countries in Africa, Europe and Latin America; with national, provincial and local government; and in the NGO and SME sectors. From 2011 to June 2018 he was the Head of Evaluation and Research in South Africa’s Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME), where he led the establishment of South Africa’s national evaluation system.

In 2015 Ian was a founder of the Twende Mbele African M&E Partnership, with partners Uganda, Benin, South Africa, CLEAR AA and African Development Bank, and has been a Commissioner of the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) since 2012.

Ian left DPME in July 2018 to join the Centre for Learning on Evaluation and Results (CLEAR Anglophone Africa) advising internationally on evaluation and evidence, teaching and writing, and is co-leading the research project leading to the book Using Evidence in Policy and Practice - lessons from Africa.