I am back from a spur of the moment short holiday where I did not open my laptop for six days, but it nice to see the conversation and discussion continuing.
As we move into our final week, I want to introduce the FARA guide Criteria to Assess High-Quality Food Systems Foresight in Africa (the link is in the intro to this discussion board, but also attached below).My colleague, Dr. Katindi Sivi, was a co-author, so I'm excited to showcase her work.
What I find especially useful about this report is that it is not a step-by-step foresight manual. It is a quality framework for thinking about what makes foresight meaningful, credible, inclusive, and actually useful for decision-making in complex food systems contexts. The guide argues that, in a time shaped by climate risk, demographic change, geopolitical uncertainty, and structural inequality, foresight must move beyond scenario production toward anticipatory governance, local ownership, and real policy influence. It also places unusual emphasis on African realities, including indigenous knowledge, informality, power relations, and participatory practice.
That feels highly relevant to the conversation we have been having here. Over the past weeks, several of you have pushed us to think beyond retrospective accountability alone. Silva and Amy asked whether evaluation can be freed from compliance logic. Rick challenged us to move from prediction toward preparedness and plural futures. Uzodinma emphasized mindset, local ownership, and adaptive learning. Rhode reminded us that knowledge must be communicated in usable ways, not just written for evaluators. Those themes are all echoed in this guide.
The guide is organised around nine interlinked criteria, including contextual relevance, inclusivity, ethics, methodological rigor, strategic communication, institutional embedding, and shifts in thought and behaviour. It also argues that evaluation of foresight should not focus on predictive accuracy, but on whether foresight improves learning (another common theme in our discussions), decision-making, contribution to change, and long-term systems transformation.
So for this final week, I would like to ask: what would high-quality future-informed evaluation actually look like in practice? What conditions need to be in place for it to be ethical, participatory, useful, and institutionally embedded rather than just another report on the shelf?
RE: From Hindsight to Foresight: How Evaluation Can Become Future-Informed
Kenya
Steven Lynn Lichty
Managing Partner
REAL Consulting Group
Posted on 18/04/2026
I am back from a spur of the moment short holiday where I did not open my laptop for six days, but it nice to see the conversation and discussion continuing.
As we move into our final week, I want to introduce the FARA guide Criteria to Assess High-Quality Food Systems Foresight in Africa (the link is in the intro to this discussion board, but also attached below). My colleague, Dr. Katindi Sivi, was a co-author, so I'm excited to showcase her work.
What I find especially useful about this report is that it is not a step-by-step foresight manual. It is a quality framework for thinking about what makes foresight meaningful, credible, inclusive, and actually useful for decision-making in complex food systems contexts. The guide argues that, in a time shaped by climate risk, demographic change, geopolitical uncertainty, and structural inequality, foresight must move beyond scenario production toward anticipatory governance, local ownership, and real policy influence. It also places unusual emphasis on African realities, including indigenous knowledge, informality, power relations, and participatory practice.
That feels highly relevant to the conversation we have been having here. Over the past weeks, several of you have pushed us to think beyond retrospective accountability alone. Silva and Amy asked whether evaluation can be freed from compliance logic. Rick challenged us to move from prediction toward preparedness and plural futures. Uzodinma emphasized mindset, local ownership, and adaptive learning. Rhode reminded us that knowledge must be communicated in usable ways, not just written for evaluators. Those themes are all echoed in this guide.
The guide is organised around nine interlinked criteria, including contextual relevance, inclusivity, ethics, methodological rigor, strategic communication, institutional embedding, and shifts in thought and behaviour. It also argues that evaluation of foresight should not focus on predictive accuracy, but on whether foresight improves learning (another common theme in our discussions), decision-making, contribution to change, and long-term systems transformation.
So for this final week, I would like to ask: what would high-quality future-informed evaluation actually look like in practice? What conditions need to be in place for it to be ethical, participatory, useful, and institutionally embedded rather than just another report on the shelf?