Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
A new ICAI report issued this week suggests that large parts of UK aid spending on research and development remain hampered by a design that favors British researcher interests over urgent research topics and capacity prioritized by the world’s poorest countries. The next few months are a perfect opportunity to fix that problem, because the two most problematic funds are up for renewal.
Directing innovation to overcome barriers to development in the world’s poorest countries is surely a good use of aid, then. But who should decide the barriers to overcome, and how should the research and development be supported?
Building on a recent paper on UK ODA-financed research and development that discussed some of the issues with the current funding allocation model for R&D including around transparency and the fact that it was largely (de facto) “tied” to UK institutions, this blog explores different types of research and where and how it makes sense to fund them.
The UK’s development agency, DFID, has stated that it views research as the best way to spend aid and that it intends to place high quality research central to its aid strategy. In a new paper, we find significant problems with the way that UK aid is being used to back research: a huge ramp-up in support has largely gone to fund opaque, unfocused research in UK universities. There are better approaches.
The UK government has recently ramped up the amount of aid that is directed towards research and development. While this can be positive in ensuring a sound research base for UK aid funds, this should not be seen as an opportunity to plug UK university funding deficits, or to "tie aid" to the UK economy.
The ideas that will lead to sustained, transformative change in Africa must and will come from Africans in Africa. Central to this is the building of Africa-led, Africa-based institutions capable of producing research that responds to local needs. Yet, despite decades of global investment targeted at building capacity in African institutions, sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) continues to lag behind all other global regions on key research metrics, including overall institutional rating, research outputs, and trained personnel.
In March, our team at the Center for Global Development and Office of Health Economics posted a consultation draft of a policy proposal for a Market-Driven, Value-Based Advanced Commitment (MVAC). The MVAC is a new mechanism that puts middle-income country governments in the driver’s seat to accelerate R&D for diseases that affect the world’s poor—specifically, the 10 million men, women, and children who develop tuberculosis (TB) disease each year and desperately need better therapies.
Most people accept that we will only achieve sustainable energy patterns with a substantial investment in research and development, but where the research will take place and where energy will be consumed doesn’t necessarily match up. Within 25 years, non-OECD countries will account for two-thirds of global energy consumption. To that end, the climate and energy challenge is primarily about finding ways to bring clean energy to Rio and Lagos, not to San Francisco or Berlin.
New technologies are central to the kind of global progress outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals, and those technologies need to reach people in the developing world who can benefit from them. But “technology transfer” is a terrible way to think about the issues involved.
Using research to inform policy often involves reading scientific articles in costly books and journals. But for some policymakers and analysts these costs may be prohibitively expensive, leaving them without access to critical information.
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