ImpactMapper is excited to announce the pilot project of one of our 2024 Survey Online Tool Fellows: Africa Matters Initiative.

In this blog we feature a brief interview with Esther Odi Tieku, M&E Coordinator of Africa Matters Initiative, to learn more about their pilot project of gathering stories for impact of their flagship programs in time to celebrate their organization’s 10th year anniversary.

What is the mission and positive social impact of your organization?

Esther Odi Tieku: Our mission is actually to contribute to upskilling and empowering African youth to change their communities and the African narrative through leadership, social entrepreneurship, and advocacy concepts. We try to inculcate how young people should envision leadership from the African perspective, how social entrepreneurship should be seen from the African perspective, and what advocacy means from the African perspective.

Tell us a bit about your pilot project for the IM Fellowship and what are your main expectations?

EOT: Africa Matters Initiative is looking forward to evaluating the impact of two main flagship programs, the Africa Matters Ambassador's and ShE is Empowered. Currently, these are the two programs that have experienced some form of continuity following COVID-19. We want to conduct some tracer surveys, to give back to our project beneficiaries and understand the extent of our project impact. We are hoping to use both the quantitative and qualitative approaches to really understand how the action programs are also contributing to changing the narrative and economic transformation in their respective communities. The pilot project is really to understand and also document transparently how our implementation journey has been.

Most importantly, we also understand that we are hitting the decade mark, we also have to rethink how we have designed our program, what lasting impact does our program have on indirect beneficiaries, and its level of relevance to the pressing needs on the continent. Due to limiting funding focus on MEAL and time, we have not had the chance to thoroughly assess the above for these two programs.

Leveraging on the ImpactMapper Fellowship creates that opportunity to work with seasoned experts who will guide us through the process, to think through first our program design. We want to understand the best practices for evaluating these remote programs, and to also ensure continuity, sustainability and ability to scale up.

‍Why is it important to engage in this pilot project and how will it support your organization's work?

EOT: It’s important for us as an organization, it provides us with concrete data to rethink about program design and its enhancements. We also want to show that throughout the project, we are contributing to changing the African narrative. I would also add that for us it is a strategic time considering that we are just turning 10 years old. We believe that as an organization we are growing and we need to also ensure that we are tightening any loopholes in our programs' design to also share our experiences with the young and emerging organizations as well.

How can people follow your organization's work?

EOT: We are quite active on some social media platforms. As I rightly indicated, we actually started as a movement. We started with social media campaigns. We are at Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn @Africa Matters. For more information, visit www.africamattersinitiative.com

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