The primary authors of this report are Alf Wills, Mapula Tshangela, Narnia Bohler-Muller, Ajoy Datta, Nikki Funke, Linda Godfrey, Bongani Matomela, Gary Pienaar, Nedson Pophiwa, Louise Shaxson, Wilma Strydom and Ke Yu. This report was developed as part of the VakaYiko consortium project supporting the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) in South Africa. Teams from the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) (in South Africa) and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) (in the UK), the Department for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) have been working with DEA teams to help it understand what may need to be done to strengthen DEA’s approach to evidence-informed policy-making. The effort has been highly collaborative and we are very grateful to all individuals who have consented to be interviewed, attended meetings, read and commented on draft reports and offered their insights, opinions and advice. We are also grateful to those people who offered their time and expertise during interviews for the five diagnosis studies