Opinion: Development research funded right saves lives and livelihoods

At its best, development research is transformative. Yet for development research to be its best, donor countries and philanthropic and institutional funders need to support new, sustainable working methods for research projects to reach the scale needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. It was research funded by official development aid that developed a vaccine against Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, whose technology was repurposed to produce the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. In Brazil, interdisciplinary researchers used information gathered from satellites, supercomputers, and the behavior of plant stomata to develop warning systems for people in the path of landslides, floods, and fires, saving both lives and livelihoods. But in the rush to launch new funds, funders can skimp on consultation with lower- and middle-income countries, thus failing to pin down paths to implementation and limiting research impact. Lessons from publicly available evaluations of large official development assistance research funds — the Newton Fund of £735 million and the Global Challenges Research Fund of £1.5 billion — alongside further analysis of embedding equity in research partnerships include some clear do’s and don’ts. 1. Don’t launch without a vision for impact and delivery strategy A theory of change is a powerful way to communicate the what, why, and how. The U.K. government’s Newton Fund was originally conceived as a fund to promote the benefits to the United Kingdom of research collaboration with emerging powers. By its launch in 2014, it was entirely ODA funded, with a new primary objective of the development and welfare of partner countries. The theory of change, which sets out what the fund aims to achieve, why it is achievable, and how it is done was only developed two years later. This lack of a delivery strategy meant that the fund’s secondary objective, the U.K. benefitting from research partnerships, was prioritized instead. It’s also key to measure the impact on the research ecosystem as well as at the project level. A Newton-funded Egyptian-U.K. collaboration that discovered new tools to diagnose and treat liver cancer concluded that prevention is not only about keeping the disease from happening but also establishing a stronger research environment that can effectively support efforts to beat the disease 2. Don’t exclude partners through rushed timelines or complex rules The GCRF was launched with little prior notice and the instruction that money be spent quickly. The speed made it difficult to engage with the agendas of LMICs or for delivery partners to collaborate. Large joint programs only happened in later funding rounds. The Newton Fund match funding requirement propelled innovative research collaborations and increased the fund’s value for money. But complex requirements to match the U.K. contribution in cash or kind excluded countries and institutions with less established research infrastructure, which perpetuated inequalities in global research capacity. In contrast, the GCRF did not require such a match. It encouraged new partners by including grants of various sizes. Relationships were built using seed funding before progressing to collaborative partnerships. Smaller awards were more manageable for organizations unused to ODA funding. 3. Do embed sustainability This can be achieved by improving LMIC ownership, long-term funding allocations, and contingency plans. Sustainability improves when funders support co-creation and co-delivery. Co-creation requires time for collaboratively setting the agenda, often via workshops and research training. Co-delivery needs in-country coordination of delivery partners, LMIC representation on review panels, publishing findings in local languages, and fully crediting LMIC researchers. Long-term funding allocations can help sustainability. GCRF was hampered by annual funding allocations. In contrast, the Brazil research cited above was a five-year collaboration between researchers in Australia, Brazil, and the U.K which used 30 years of data. 4. Do encourage co-creation with nonacademic partners and end users Engaging stakeholders early on makes for more impact: It leads to research that is more relevant, with outputs tailored to the needs of different users. Newton prize-winning researchers who tackled energy poverty in informal settlements in Cape Town by pairing solar mini-grids with app-based pay-as-you-go sustainable business models found that working with informal settlement communities from the start of the project was important for achieving real, measurable, and replicable change 5. Do invest in equity In 2021, during the peak of COVID-19, I sat in a Zoom meeting with funders and researchers working in over 80 LMICs. Research partners explained how they redirected their work to producing research on diagnostics, vaccines, therapeutics, and social and economic research on what works to combat COVID-19. Asked how they moved so quickly, they talked about trust and respect, valuing each other, and working together. These are the hallmarks of equitable partnerships. The GCRF and Newton Fund were planned a decade ago. Both improved their ways of working in response to evaluations. But, in an environment of increased uncertainty, with COVID-19 and ODA funding cuts negatively impacting research projects, how can large funds remain relevant and effective? Supporting equitable partnerships is one answer but there is a long way to go. As Soumya Swaminathan, then chief scientist of the World Health Organization, pointed out at a session at the U.N. General Assembly Science Summit we organized last September, less than 1% of the $10 billion made available for COVID-19 research was spent in low-income countries. With only seven years left to achieve the SDGs, research funders urgently need to find ways to accelerate solutions to today’s global challenges. Increasingly, philanthropic and institutional funders are embracing different working methods with co-creation, collaboration, and more direct funding to LMIC research teams seen as the key to better outcomes.