Decolonising monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL): our learning journey 

The launch of INTRAC’s 2024-2028 strategic framework has led us to explore and challenge understandings of decolonisation and what this means for how we  think about and deliver monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL). This has built on a series of blogs and events we hosted in 2022, which allowed us to hear a variety of perspectives, including young civil society practitioners, feminist thinkers, representatives of West African civil society, and funders.  

In late 2024 we reviewed a range of journal articles, organisational reports and guidelines, and development sector blogs from MEL practitioners based in different regions of the world.  The authors had all been thinking about decolonisation and MEL in the humanitarian and development sector. This resulted in a decolonising MEL scoping paper, which highlighted various themes relating to how MEL could contribute to decolonising development and transforming power relations. 

At one level, we must consider the potential harms from using MEL within the wider context of unequal relationships in the development and humanitarian aid system. Current global expectations about what MEL is and why we do it are rooted in concepts, paradigms, and philosophies from the global minority, reinforced by aid donors.  ’Decolonising’ MEL can be seen as challenging these existing MEL standards and ‘rules of the game’ and how they contribute to wider power inequities.   

On another level, ‘decolonising’ MEL might mean promoting different principles and values, such as inclusivity and equity, to underpin and guide how MEL is done. More practically speaking, we might question how MEL is governed and managed, re-balancing decision-making power from MEL commissioners towards local actors and evolving the role and responsibility of MEL practitioners from ‘expert’ to co-producer of knowledge and learning. Perhaps most obviously, ‘decolonising’ can also mean re-thinking the types of methods and approaches we adopt in our MEL work, to be more culturally specific and equity–focused.  

We shared this thinking with a group of consultants in West Africa that we have been working with, together with WACSI, on a programme funded by Comic Relief. We asked what ‘decolonised MEL’ could mean in practice for MEL commissioners and practitioners. These are some of the things we have learned so far: 

• Decolonisation carries different meanings in different contexts depending on varying experiences of colonialism. As a sector we need to embrace complexity and respond to unique, context-specific experiences of colonialism, appreciating different perspectives.  
• The language of decolonisation has become politicised and has been a barrier to exploring the challenges of and ethics around doing MEL. We have found it helpful to explore understandings of how power is playing out in MEL work and how we can create more equal partnerships for MEL.   
• There needs to be a process of unlearning and re-imagining: MEL practitioners need to acknowledge their power, question their choice of methods and expectations of what counts as knowledge, and re-think the role they play. This means moving from being the expert that provides solutions, to the facilitator that enables others to find their own answers.  
• There is an assumption that decolonisation of aid and development and its core practices, including MEL, is a good thing, but some are critical of this agenda. They argue that it goes no further than existing equity-focused, feminist, anti-racist, and participatory approaches. INTRAC is still exploring what are the hallmarks of ‘decolonised’ MEL in practice that distinguish it from such approaches. 

We recognise that we are on a journey of learning and unlearning to challenge ourselves and others to consider practical ways for MEL to be part of the solution and contribute to wider efforts to decolonise development and transform power relations in our sector.  We are continuing to explore these issues with our network of MEL consultants, framing our inquiry around three broad questions: 

1. What does decolonising MEL mean in different contexts? 
2. How do we understand our own power as MEL practitioners? 
3. How can we transform the way we design and deliver MEL to challenge existing global norms and be more culturally diverse and locally rooted?