On 15th May Chris Mulaudzi gave a guest lecture on the Development Studies Honours
course at University of Pretoria. Chris is the General Manager Corporate Performance
and Governance at the Independent Development Trust (https://idt.org.za/), where he
has worked since 2016. Previous work experience includes being the Director Service
Delivery Monitoring in the Department of Social Development and work on Monitoring
and Evaluation at Department of Land Affairs.

Chris’s presentation was on “The Evolution and Implementation of Monitoring and
Evaluation Practice in South Africa”. He gave an overview of the development and
components of the government’s results based monitoring and evaluation systems and
shared examples from his extensive experience. Examples included evaluations of the
Child Support Grant and the Extended Public Works Programmes, and the National
Income Dynamics Survey. He also explain the Citizen Based Monitoring
(https://www.dpme.gov.za/keyfocusareas/cbmSite/Pages/default.aspx) that is supposed
to involve ordinary citizens to strengthen government accountability.

Chris encouraged the students saying to them that “you are not just doing degrees for
the sake of it, you are more likely to be very useful members of society… it is very
important to have a broader understanding of how society works, which is something
you are likely to get in this course in development studies.”