Thanks, Dennis. I really appreciate how you ground this in the lived realities of Kenya (my home!) and the wider East African region. Your point that drought, mobility, refugee dynamics, demographic pressure, and devolution are not “contextual risks” but core features of the operating system is exactly why future-informed evaluation matters.
What stands out for me is your observation that many programmes are evaluated against a past version of the system....that is a powerful way to name the problem. If the assumptions beneath a theory of change have shifted, then judging effectiveness or sustainability against those original assumptions can produce technically valid but strategically misleading findings.
I also strongly agree with your shift from static baselines to dynamic reference points, and from endline judgement to continuous sense-making. In devolved and climate-vulnerable contexts, evaluation has to become more anticipatory, politically informed, and adaptive. It should help actors understand not only whether something worked, but whether it remains viable as conditions change.
For me, your reflection reinforces that future-informed evaluation is not about adding foresight tools for their own sake. It is about improving the relevance, timing, and usefulness of evaluative judgement in systems that are already moving.
RE: From Hindsight to Foresight: How Evaluation Can Become Future-Informed
Kenya
Steven Lynn Lichty
Managing Partner
REAL Consulting Group
Posted on 29/04/2026
Thanks, Dennis. I really appreciate how you ground this in the lived realities of Kenya (my home!) and the wider East African region. Your point that drought, mobility, refugee dynamics, demographic pressure, and devolution are not “contextual risks” but core features of the operating system is exactly why future-informed evaluation matters.
What stands out for me is your observation that many programmes are evaluated against a past version of the system....that is a powerful way to name the problem. If the assumptions beneath a theory of change have shifted, then judging effectiveness or sustainability against those original assumptions can produce technically valid but strategically misleading findings.
I also strongly agree with your shift from static baselines to dynamic reference points, and from endline judgement to continuous sense-making. In devolved and climate-vulnerable contexts, evaluation has to become more anticipatory, politically informed, and adaptive. It should help actors understand not only whether something worked, but whether it remains viable as conditions change.
For me, your reflection reinforces that future-informed evaluation is not about adding foresight tools for their own sake. It is about improving the relevance, timing, and usefulness of evaluative judgement in systems that are already moving.