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Contribution short abstract

This paper interrogates how dominant M&E frameworks obscure systems change, relational value, and learning. Drawing on systems innovation practice and decolonising funding debates, it proposes counter-metrics and creative approaches to evidencing transformation beyond linear impact.

Contribution long abstract

Despite growing recognition that development challenges are systemic, most monitoring and evaluation (M&E) frameworks remain rooted in linear causality, attribution my, and short-term outcomes. This paper argues that such approaches systematically render invisible the kinds of systems transformation that matters most to local actors: shifts in relationships, power, norms, learning, and collective capacity.

Drawing on the Systems Innovation Explorations framework co-developed with IDIA and Results for Development, and the upcoming book, Reclaiming Africa’s Development Narrative, the paper uses Nigerian proverbs to examine how conventional M&E practices struggle to capture emergent change, productive failure, and non-linear pathways of influence. It foregrounds learning-oriented, adaptive, and values-based approaches to evidence that privilege sensemaking over control and contribution over attribution. These insights are placed in dialogue with arguments from decolonising development funding, which highlight how dominant metrics reproduce power asymmetries by privileging funder-defined success, technocratic evidence, and extractive knowledge practices.

Through reflective analysis of systems innovation programmes and funding practices, the paper proposes a set of counter-metric orientations that might better align evaluation with how systems actually change in a way more meaningful to those within it. It also explores the role of cultural and creative methodologies as legitimate forms of evidence that might hospice out the current hierarchical paradigm to surface meaning, dignity, and agency often excluded from traditional measurement tools.

This paper contributes to ongoing debates on evidence, accountability, and power in development, and offers practical provocations for funders, evaluators, and practitioners seeking to support transformation without erasing complexity.