Tracing the Roots of the Modern Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Profession: From Early Practices to Modern Professionalism

Abstract

The origin of M&E as a profession is a topic of debate. Literature suggests that evaluation practice has its roots in Africa and Asia. Egypt reportedly practiced "systematic evaluation of crops" as early as 5000 BC (Morra-Imas & Rist 2009:19), while China had a carefully planned social evaluation system with government staff selection by 2200 BC (Shadish & Luellen 2005:183). The principles of M&E and the actual practices of M&E were developed in Ancient Egypt about 6482 years before the first Portuguese reached the Congo in 1482–83 and about 6652 years before Jan van Riebeeck, the commander of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), landed at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652 (Uwizeyimana 2023:1 ). Nevertheless, the discussion on the origin of M&E as a modern profession remains unresolved.
Methodology: The paper uses a robust and systematic desk-top literature review to determine the origin of M&E as a profession.
Results: The analysis of available literature suggests that any profession worth its name requires its professionals to acquire a sufficient level and combination of high-level theoretical and practical training to acquire the requisite skills and competency. In the same way, people who are involved in the M&E profession must attain the highest level of theoretical and practical skills to become M&E professionals. M&E is a high-level management profession and is not one of those professions where you can gain technical and functional mastery through on-the-job training and learning sessions (i.e., observation and active engagement in practical work).
Conclusion/- and Recommendations: In the absence of records of a non-Western University which offered M&E qualifications before Western academic institutions provided them, and the fact that the M&E theoretical mastery and M&E qualifications (in addition to practical skills and practices), which are sine qua non-conditions for M&E to be a profession, were first acquired from Western countries’ universities and other Western academic institutions, and the fact that most of the known literature (i.e., journal articles, books, etc.) used in teaching and training the first M&E professionals were almost exclusively produced by western academics; then it can be safely concluded that M&E became a profession first in western countries and only became a profession in other parts of the world, including Africa.