Integrating AI and Indigenous Realist Evaluation: Amplifying Community Voices for Strategic Change
Mesa | En línea
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Organizado por:
Waitrose Foundation Southern Africa
Sobre el evento
As the global evaluation community navigates the intersection of artificial intelligence and evidence informed decision making, there is a central tension between leveraging AI for efficiency and mitigating the risks of algorithmic bias and epistemic violence. This session directly addresses the Glocal 2026 theme of "Evaluation, Evidence, and Trust in the Age of AI" by presenting a practical, decolonial approach that adapts AI to African realities.
The discussion is grounded in recent realist evaluations conducted by the Waitrose Foundation Southern Africa (WFSA). Faced with massive volumes of unstructured qualitative data, collected through focus groups, storytelling and surveys, we integrated AI to extract themes and map latent Context-Mechanism-Outcome (CMO) configurations. These evaluations do not only demonstrate the use of AI but also its integration in contexts where data is collected in African local languages.
Importantly, the session will highlight how we safeguarded trust and cultural integrity by implementing a "human-in-the-loop" validation framework. The discussion will also demonstrate how these AI-assisted evaluation findings were disseminated to various stakeholders and mobilised buy-in, culminating in the first ever WFSA Strategic Session on March 25, 2026, which directly shaped the Foundation's 2026–2030 Strategic Action Plan.
Anticipated key takeaways for participants:
• Practical AI application in realist evaluation: Participants will learn how to integrate AI tools to process complex, multi-modal qualitative data into structured causal variables without losing cultural nuance. The session will also demonstrate strategies to prevent bias and safeguard trust through a "human-in-the-loop" framework.
• Translating evidence into strategic action: Participants will gain practical strategies for building M&E buy-in and translating complex evaluation insights into high-level strategic shifts, using the recent formulation of the WFSA 2026–2030 Strategic Action Plan as a blueprint.
The discussion is grounded in recent realist evaluations conducted by the Waitrose Foundation Southern Africa (WFSA). Faced with massive volumes of unstructured qualitative data, collected through focus groups, storytelling and surveys, we integrated AI to extract themes and map latent Context-Mechanism-Outcome (CMO) configurations. These evaluations do not only demonstrate the use of AI but also its integration in contexts where data is collected in African local languages.
Importantly, the session will highlight how we safeguarded trust and cultural integrity by implementing a "human-in-the-loop" validation framework. The discussion will also demonstrate how these AI-assisted evaluation findings were disseminated to various stakeholders and mobilised buy-in, culminating in the first ever WFSA Strategic Session on March 25, 2026, which directly shaped the Foundation's 2026–2030 Strategic Action Plan.
Anticipated key takeaways for participants:
• Practical AI application in realist evaluation: Participants will learn how to integrate AI tools to process complex, multi-modal qualitative data into structured causal variables without losing cultural nuance. The session will also demonstrate strategies to prevent bias and safeguard trust through a "human-in-the-loop" framework.
• Translating evidence into strategic action: Participants will gain practical strategies for building M&E buy-in and translating complex evaluation insights into high-level strategic shifts, using the recent formulation of the WFSA 2026–2030 Strategic Action Plan as a blueprint.
Presentador/a
| Nombre | Título | Biografía |
|---|---|---|
| Ishmael Lupahla | Mr | Ishmael Lupahla is the Impact, M&E Manager at Waitrose Foundation SA with 10 years' experience. He leads participatory realist evaluations, champions evidence use for strategic decisions and advances digitized M&E systems to drive organizational learning and impact. |
| Moses Mashingaidze | Mr | Moses Mashingaidze is a MERL specialist with 15+ years’ experience in evaluation, analytics, and digital data systems. He works at the intersection of evidence, technology, and AI, helping organisations use data, automation, and learning systems to improve decisions and impact. |