  Thanks to the capabilities of modern telescopes and instrumentation, it is
now possible to resolve single stars in external dwarf galaxies, provided they
are bright enough. For galactic regions with deep enough photometry, detailed
colour-magnitude diagrams are constructed, from which the star formation
history and the initial mass function can be inferred by comparison with
synthetic diagrams. Both the star formation history and the initial mass
function are free parameters of galactic chemical evolution models. In this
contribution we show how constraining them through high resolution photometry
in principle allows us to better understand the mechanisms of dwarf galaxy
formation and evolution.
