Research findings may be widely published in scientific journals, peer-reviewed and academically admired — but are they filtering through to the public, and bringing about tangible improvements to everyday life?

In partnership with www.research4development.info, IPS is seeking to answer these questions, enliven the debate about research, and help to ensure that it does indeed change lives.

Led by IPS Africa, the project seeks to connect the worlds of research and media, bringing often hidden research stories to the mainstream media and general public.

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The new research strategy More on the consultation process View outputs of DFID-funded research

At the recent World Food Summit in Rome, Douglas Alexander, Secretary of State for International Development, announced that DFID will provide £150 million to support international agricultural research over the next five years. £130 million of this is allocated to the Consultative Group for International Agricultural research (CGIAR) and the balance to other international agricultural research organisations which complement the work of the CGIAR.

This major increase in funding to the CGIAR is because the “CGIAR is delivering good research.” It is also dependent upon “significant reform in the CGIAR.” Read more…

CGIAR Science Council Executive Director Ruben Echeverría comments on the additional funding for the CGIAR:

See also short interviews with Adel El-Beltagy and Mark Holderness of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR)

See DFID’s Research Strategy on Sustainable Agriculture

The new research strategy More on the consultation process View outputs of DFID-funded research

According to Tag (Mary) McEntegart of INASP, the new DFID research strategy has responded well to the issues raised in the consultation.

She highlights three main issues: the emphasis on horizon scanning, recognition of the key role of research communication, and a willingness to support more risky research.

Share your comments on the strategy

The new research strategy More on the consultation process View outputs of DFID-funded research

A new DFID working paper explores the process of ’state-building’ - the process through which states enhance their ability to function - in development.

This paper provides a way for readers to understand states, and the processes that drive their development. It outlines language and key concepts for state-building; it examines those factors that are likely to influence the direction of state-building, including issues that are shaped by policy decisions; and it concludes with some implications of this work for donors.

Download the working paper
See more on DFID’s Research Strategy on Governance in Challenging Environments

The new research strategy More on the consultation process View outputs of DFID-funded research

In April, Paolo Sarfati of DG Development explained the current approach of the European Commission towards research for development. He explains that it goes in three main directions:

1. to carry out, in Europe, more and more research on MDG related issues;
2. to strengthen research capacities in developing countries;
3. to act on the issue of brain drain … through ‘brain circulation’ that encourages collaboration and movement among researchers.

According to Sarfati, the overall strategy is to improve the coherence of internal European research strategies with research for development strategies.

He also comments on the Commission’s support for agricultural research where it seeks to link agricultural research with development, particularly in Africa. The policy provides support through international centers such as the CGIAR, also at the regional level, through for example FARA, and to national research, mostly through the European Development Fund.

The FARA blog contains reports on a new Initiative on Strengthening Capacity for Agricultural Research and Development in Africa - SCARDA

Interviews with Marcel Mwalozie of CORAF and with Judith Lungu of the University of Zambia elaborate how the initiative will benefit their organizations and networks.

It’s hard to imagine how hard it must have been to write this strategy. Vested interests lining up in serried ranks outside the door. Political priorities evolving with a new administration. The real world changing in ways which expose the poverty of much current orthodoxy. And underlying the entire discussion, long-term scepticism in some parts of DFID about the real value of research: research, as they often say, as the opposite of action. Under the circumstances, it is an achievement to have produced a strategy at all, let alone one that is clear and coherent.

Will the vested interests be satisfied? Probably. The best organised lobbies are health and agriculture, and both are well represented and promised increased funding. In 2007/8, they received over 70% of the total funding of £128m. The economists and other social scientists have not done badly, with the new emphasis on growth, and important commitments elsewhere to work on social exclusion and inequality, as well as to expand work on institutions, state effectiveness and politics. Are there any losers, I wonder? Or did a significant increase in funding make it possible to satisfy everyone? It would be interesting to hear from demographers, urban planners, and international relations specialists, among others.

Institutionally, the references to partnership will please the other donors, the Foundations, the private sector, and the international institutions like the CGIAR. Developing country research managers will also be pleased by the emphasis on institution-building. The big losers, it seems to me, are UK institutions. We seem to have lost, again, the campaign to persuade DFID to recognise its responsibilities to the research infrastructure of UK plc, a global and national public good. I say this ruefully, as one who runs a part of that infrastructure, and all of whose collaborators and competitors in Europe are core-funded.

Have the priorities of the new administration been adequately reflected. Well, Gordon Brown has launched a Call to Action on the MDGs, and they are well represented. He has also talked a lot about the importance of reforming the international system, most recently in his high-profile speech in Boston. Douglas Alexander has underlined the importance of the MDGs, of course, and has given DFID four main priorities, viz growth, fragile states, climate change and reform of the international system. I would say that the first three are well covered, but that the priority GB and DA have both given to the international system is rather poorly reflected, apart from a short reference to aid. Not much on the UN or the EU, for example.

Have changes in the real world been adequately reflected, both those we are struggling with in 2008, and those yet to come. Will there be research on the credit crunch and the food price crisis, on the geopolitics of energy, on the changing nature of globalisation, on rapid urbanisation, and on the technological revolutions which will fundamentally alter the life expectancy, life styles and employment patterns of the next generation? Up to a point, I guess, in the programmes on growth and new technologies. There are some interesting challenges tucked away in the detail, like a programme to work on high-value crops grown by smallholders on the outskirts of town. Why not, I wonder, the poverty impact of high value crops grown by large farms away from town?

As to links back into practice, this is a dominant theme, with the strategy committing 30% of the budget by 2010 into making research ‘available, accessible and useable’. Golly. I’m all in favour of an innovations systems approach and of research into use – I spent some years, after all, as a farming systems researcher, and now run a think-tank whose principal mandate is bridging research and policy. But £60m a year? Let’s be clear that this money, and any additional money spent on capacity development, is not ‘research’ as commonly understood. I wonder how many days of actual research time are actually funded now, and how many will be covered in 2010? It would be a pity if the research budget were asked to pick up expenditures which rightly belong elsewhere, for example in country programme expenditures or in policy programmes.

Finally, implementation will test the entrepreneurial skills of DFID staff, and probably of researchers too. Competitive tendering looks likely to be the dominant methodology. The key ‘modality’ looks like being the Research Programme Consortium, an arrangement which I would like to see independently evaluated, with particular attention to transactions costs, economies of scale, and conditions for research quality. Practically speaking, there will be 24 separate programme areas to manage within the 6 main priority themes, plus a very small amount of money for responsive research. I hope that there will be enough flexibility in the system, and sufficient flexibility in DFID, to identify and nurture promising research, in the way that Foundations and bodies like IDRC commonly do. It’s really a pity that the battle to set up a separate DFID Research Foundation was lost.

This was an exercise worth doing, and the highly consultative process was exemplary. It is kind – and brave – of DFID to have asked for comments after publication. Let’s hope implementation is carried out with similar courage and similar success.

Simon Maxwell is Director of the Overseas Development Institute and the immediate past President of the Development Studies Association of the UK and Ireland.
May 7, 2008

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The new research strategy More on the consultation process View outputs of DFID-funded research

IIED Director Camilla Toulmin explains that IIED aims to “locate research within a bigger process of change”, working with local partners to feed into processes of policy, legislation and practice.

She suggests that research “by itself” would give less satisfaction than generating the evidence and the insights “jointly with the people who need to take it forward.”

Reflecting on the priorities in the new DFID research strategy, she calls climate change “the biggest challenge” - both its direct impact on peoples’ livelihoods and any unintended consequences of efforts to mitigate its effects.

Finally, she reflects on the roles that researchers need to play, arguing they need to “ask difficult questions, explode some of the myths and assumptions that lie behind a lot of day to day policy and thinking. We need to be critical about the assumptions we make as the assumptions are often wrong.”

She concludes by asking: “Researchers need to be troublesome, researchers need to ask difficult questions … Is that something that DFID could fund?”

See her commentary on the strategy …

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The new research strategy More on the consultation process View outputs of DFID-funded research

Julius Court, DFID Governance Adviser is excited by the focus in the new DFID research strategy on “getting the evidence into use” - bridging research and policy.

In terms of linking research and policy, he sees “lots of things the new DFID research strategy can do”: It will support networks and fora where researchers and policy makers come together, and it will support communication functions for researchers, so their messages get out “in a clearer way and a more policy-relevant way.”

A key aspect is to ensure that research is communicated and the results are take up in policy and practice. Abigail Mulhall, Team Leader of research communication at DFID explains the approach DFID will take in this area:

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John Barrett, Senior Livelihoods Adviser at DFID, argues that the new commitment to agricultural research in DFID’s new research strategy research strategy is critical, as world food prices soar, 800 million people face hunger, and the international community seeks to meet its first millennium development goal.

He notes that one of the “key changes” in the new strategy is that it is not just “delivering research products but supporting developing countries themselves in terms of their own capacity to innovate to research and through them to support farmers to innovate.”

He cautions however that investments in agricultural research will only payoff when they are “complemented by other policy reforms and investments.” “We need clear, sound policies to be in place, that support agriculture and rural development…”

He concludes by highlighting the need for coherence in the agricultural and rural development sector - as a way for the many organisations involved to make their work more effective.

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The new research strategy More on the consultation process View outputs of DFID-funded research