Partnership with South Africa's Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME)

The South Africa policy team is part of J-PAL Africa’s broader policy team with several staff members focused on and based in South Africa. The team aims to support South African policymakers and other implementers of social programs in the delivery of effective programming that improves lives at scale. The team collaborates closely with local government departments, researchers, and NGOs to support the use of evidence from randomized evaluations to drive policy reform and practice.

Our approach

The South Africa policy team works across three sectors, Livelihoods (Social Protection and Labour), Health, and Education, to integrate scientific evidence into policy and programming. Our support for evidence application includes:

  1. Sharing relevant policy insights: The team tailors global evidence to the South African context to provide clear, concise, and relevant lessons and insights to policymakers and implementers to inform policies and programs.
  2. Nurturing the development of policy-relevant research: The team supports the development of policy-relevant research, including identifying opportunities for research to answer critical policy questions, supporting fundraising, and matching researchers to governments and implementing partners. 
  3. Supporting the scale-up of effective programs: The team provides technical support to scale up evidence-informed interventions that have been shown to be effective in the South African context. This includes convening partners and researchers, supporting knowledge management, funding implementation research,  and providing technical support to adapt interventions to the local context while maintaining fidelity to the core elements of the evidence-based intervention. 
  4. Strengthening capacity:  The team supports the development of local partners' capacity to generate and use evidence from randomised controlled trials through the delivery of tailored training and research resources. J-PAL Africa also hosts an annual flagship training,  Evaluating Social Programs, designed specifically for policymakers, which is hosted in South Africa on a rotating basis. 

Portfolio team

  1. Thokozile Gotter, Policy Manager (J-PAL Africa) 

  2. Teresa Lezcano Cadwallader, Director of Policy (J-PAL Africa)

Media and updates