Author: Gerald Onsando, Ubuntu Impact Consulting
This short paper presents an Ubuntu-informed evaluation of the Black Rhinos Basketball Program, a grassroots community crime prevention initiative supporting young African Australians in metropolitan Melbourne. The topic centres on how traditional African ways of knowing, being, and valuing – specifically the African philosophy of Ubuntu – can be meaningfully integrated into contemporary evaluation practice to enhance cultural responsiveness, ethical engagement, and practical relevance in Australia.
The objective of the presentation is to demonstrate how Ubuntu philosophy, often articulated by the maxim “I am because we are”, was operationalised as both a conceptual and methodological foundation for evaluation, and why this culturally responsive approach matters in contexts where communities experience marginalisation and overrepresentation in justice systems. The importance of the topic lies in addressing persistent gaps in evaluation practice where dominant Western frameworks may inadequately capture relational, collective, and community-defined notions of value and impact.
The core argument is that Ubuntu offers a robust bridge between traditional and emerging evaluation approaches. Three key messages will be shared: first, how Ubuntu reframes evaluation purpose from individual outcomes to relational and collective wellbeing; second, how an Ubuntu transformative methodology supports culturally responsive design, data collection, and interpretation; and third, how the Ubuntu framework of support enables evaluators to assess social impact beyond conventional value-for-money metrics, including family connectedness, community engagement, and participation in society.
The presentation will be structured as a short paper, combining conceptual explanation with applied examples from the evaluation’s process and outcomes findings. To promote interactivity and engagement, the audience will be invited to reflect on their own evaluation contexts through guided prompts, considering when and how traditional philosophies like Ubuntu could reshape their evaluation designs and judgments of value.
