%A R Stewart
%A L Langer
%A R Wildeman
%A Y Erasmus
%A LG Maluwa
%A S Jordaan
%A D Lötter
%A J Mitchell
%A P Motha
%T Building capacity for evidence-informed decision making: an example from South Africa
%D 2017
%L discovery10043599
%K South Africa; capacity building; evidence use; evidence-informed decision making
%J Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and Practice
%O This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images
or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license,
unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license,
users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this
license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
%X To maximise the potential impact and acceptability of EIDM capacity building, there is a need for programmes to coordinate their remits within existing systems, playing both ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ roles. Through a review of the South African evidence-policy landscape and analysis of a stakeholder event that brought together EIDM role players, this paper illustrates how one capacity-building programme navigated its position within the national evidence-policy interface. It identifies strategies for improving the acceptability and potential effectiveness of donor-funded EIDM capacity-building activities: understanding the evidence-policy interface, incorporating programmes into the decision-making infrastructure (being an ‘insider’), whilst retaining an element of neutrality (being an ‘outsider’).