Transforming Evidence Network Co-Hosted International Conference in South Africa

Fact Sheet September 23, 2024

Note: This page was updated on July 9, 2025, to reflect conference highlights.

Overview

The Pew Charitable Trusts co-hosted the second Transforming Evidence Network (TEN) Conference with local partners, the Pan-African Collective for Evidence (PACE) and the African Center for Equitable Development (ACED), in Cape Town, South Africa, on Nov. 19-21, 2024. The conference brought together more than 250 scholars, leaders from nongovernmental organizations, policymakers, and funders from more than 35 countries. These experts represent diverse issue areas, including health, education, climate, sustainability, peace and security, international development, economic mobility, and more. Attendees shared innovative approaches that close the gap between research and outcomes.

Conference sessions focused on making research more relevant and useful to policymakers, practitioners, and community leaders. Funders participated alongside experts to discuss new funding programs and potential initiatives.

The group discussed:

Leading-edge methodologies for studying how to increase the use of research in policy and practice.
Strategies for strengthening institutional frameworks and incentives for societally impactful research.
Best practices for embedding routine data and research use within government agencies.
The responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) in supporting policymakers with evidence.
Approaches to mobilizing large amounts of data for public policy through government-university partnerships.
Creative communications strategies such as storytelling and podcasts to bring data and evidence to life for different audiences.

Conference organizers used the location to ensure the global group could learn from each other and collaborate. African colleagues, for example, showcased their successes in delivering high-quality data and evidence to policymakers using AI, data visualization dashboards, and long-term trusted relationships—strategies that can be used in a variety of other contexts.

To overcome the language barrier for the global audience, the conference used an AI language translation tool that provides real-time, two-way captioning and translation, to allow participants to better communicate with each other and enabled some sessions to be conducted entirely in French, to facilitate the engagement of the many participants from Francophone West Africa.

Led by Pew, TEN brings together global leaders who are working to develop best practices for supporting policy and practice with research and evidence. Pew facilitates learning and collaboration across various issue areas so participants can adopt and scale promising approaches. Several new partnerships have emerged through connections fostered during the inaugural conference in 2022. These collaborations, for example, have expanded the use of new techniques for rapidly synthesizing evidence, launched new funding programs that connect country-specific data platforms and boost community-engaged technology development, and tackled new frontiers in evidence-informed decision-making within international affairs.

Support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, William T. Grant Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Gates Foundation, and Foundation for Child Development helped make this convening possible.