Elena Mancebo

Elena Mancebo is an experienced consultant on planning, monitoring, evaluation, and learning. Over the past 15 years, she has worked for governments, non-profit and development aid organisations working primarily in the African continent by providing an independent assessment of their projects’ performance; by drawing learnings that can help improve future programmes; by facilitating strategy and project planning; by building effective M&E systems that allow organisations to learn and measure progress; by facilitating training and learning programmes that build M&E capacity. She has recently worked in the fields of research to policy, multistakeholder collaboration for climate adaptation and just transition, sustainable food systems, youth development, leadership and employability.
She holds a BA (Honours) of Social Science in Political Science from Madrid, where she is originally from. Between 2016 – 2018, she taught on Theory of Change for the Social Innovation Lab at the Graduate School of Business in Cape Town, and since 2017, she is a facilitator on Social Impact Measurement and Leadership for the Social Enterprise Academy Africa. Sustainability and climate resilience is her latest passion, after she obtained a postgraduate diploma and a master’s in philosophy in Sustainable Development at Stellenbosch University. Elena is a member of the South African Monitoring and Evaluation Association.
Applied research and evaluation

  • Implementation and summative evaluation of the Climate Adaptation and Resilience programme (CLARE) for IDRC and FCDO enabling transformative research for climate adaptation and resilience in targeted African and Asian countries; project manager and evaluator (03/25 – 11/26); South Africa with remote work targeted African and Asian countries.
  • Evaluation of the Voices for Just Climate Action programme looking to strengthen locally led climate adaptation in seven countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa, especially targeting youth, women and indigenous peoples; team lead (02/25 – 04/26); South Africa with remote work in Brazil, Bolivia, Indonesia, Kenya, Paraguay, Tunisia and Zambia.
  • Midterm evaluation of the Catalyzing Change for Healthy and Sustainable Food Systems (CCHeFS) programme for the IDRC looking to enable transformative research in the field in targeted African countries; consultant (04/25 – 12/25); South Africa with remote work targeted African countries.
  • External evaluation of the TRACE Academia project for the Mastercard Foundation aimed at increasing employability and entrepreneurship skills for 300 000 young Africans by 2023 in six countries; Project Manager and Senior Consultant (08/23 – 05/24); South Africa (project implemented in Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa)
  • Mid-term review of the Urban Natural Assets and resilience project for ICLEI funded by Swed-bio aimed at integrating nature-based solutions into the local government systems in Bo-City and Cape Coast, in Sierra Leone and Ghana respectively; Co-project Manager and Senior Consultant (12/23 – 05/24); South Africa (remote work in Sierra Leone and Ghana)

Programme design, MEL systems

  • MEL system development for IDRC-funded UCT African Synthesis Centre for Climate Change, Environment and Development (ASCEND); Team Lead (02/24 – ongoing); South Africa.
  • Training and coaching the International Training Programme for Sustainable Development team (ITP322 SD) in using Outcome Harvesting for an internal evaluation. The project is implemented by Economic Policy and Research Institute (EPRI) and Arbetsfoermendlingen (AF) and funded by Sida; Senior Consultant; (10/23 – 03/24); South Africa (Project implemented in nine African and one Asian country
  • Facilitator of Theory of Change and MEL plan development for Africa Climate Reality Project (ACRP); MEL Consultant; (01 – 02/2023)
  • MEL consultant to Bread for the World grantees providing guidance with project planning, design and documentation and MEL system development support (2021 – 2023)
  • Team leader in the development of a user-friendly Theory of Change and M&E system for the Make a Difference Foundation (MAD) to enable the organisation to track the impact of its holistic scholarship programme over time (2019)
  • Social Development consultant and M&E expert in the development of processes and systems to be used by BFA to implement Solidario, an award programme part of the Banks’ emerging social Foundation, for meritorious social development projects across Angola. Includes award structuring, due diligence process and tools and results evaluation (2018 – 2019).

Capacity building

  • Trainer for Brot-fuer-die-Welt grantee training programme on planning for impact and evaluation approaches (including Theory of Change and MEL plan development); (03 – 08/22); South Africa
  • Virtual facilitation trainer for Southern Hemisphere on ToC, PMEL and OH; ongoing; South Africa and remotely
  • Trainer for Education Africa on Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (PMEL) (2023)
  • Trainer for DPME on Theory of Change (2022)
  • Member of the learning coordination team (one of five) supporting nine Comic Relief-funded NGO and academic partners working in the field of girls affected by gang violence and crime in Colombia, the UK and South Africa. (2017 – 2020).
  • M&E advisor for NOAH’s Impact Area Leads (Home, Health, Happiness, Social Enterprise Development and Sustainability) since 2017.