Graduate Student Lunch with Dave Evans and Nompumelelo Mohohlwane

About the speakers:

David Evans is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, working on education, health, and social safety nets. Previously he was at the World Bank, where he co-authored the World Development Report 2018, Learning to Realize Education’s Promise, coordinated impact evaluation work for sub-Saharan Africa, and managed education projects in Brazil. Evans has evaluated education, early child development, agriculture, health, and social safety net programs in Brazil, the Gambia, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania. He received a PhD in economics from Harvard University, specializing in economic development and labor economics.

Nompumelelo Mohohlwane is an education researcher working as a deputy director in the Research Coordination, Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate at the national Department of Basic Education, South Africa. The unit is responsible for system monitoring, supporting performance information management, and conducting research and evaluation of education interventions. She is part of the research team for the government led Early Grade Reading Study randomised control trials (2015-2018, 2018-2021).

She has a master’s degree (with distinction) in education from the University of Witwatersrand. Her studies focused on substantiating the contribution of randomised control trials (RCTs) to evaluating early grade reading acquisition using literature analysis and empirical data analysis of large sample data. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Stellenbosch, her study focuses on language in education policy. She recently co-authored research on the impact of coronavirus in South Africa, the latest report is titled “The impact of COVID-19 in education – more than a year of disruption (June 2021).

Nompumelelo is also a Center for Global Development non-resident fellow which lends its focus on providing solutions for poverty and improving efficiencies in education systems and informing global knowledge.