DIFD’s Objective for research

1. DIFD’s Objective for research • “To promote the production and uptake of technologies and policies that will contribute to poverty reduction and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.”

2. Moving from: • Sector approach (health, natural resources) • Disease specific (TB, Malaria, STI’s, HIV knowledge programmes) Towards: • Bringing all research together under a Central Research Department, (in order to eliminate duplication and to generalise across DFID research the best practice from the different current strands)

3. Total research funding expected to increase from £80m to £100m per year (~30% on health) • 2/3 of research funding will focus on four big research themes: • Agricultural productivity in Africa • Killer Diseases (TB, HIV/AIDS, Malaria, diarrhoea) • States that work in the interest of the poor • Climate change

4. Getting research into practice • There are some areas where we do have answers, but these have not yet reached the poor (2/3 of deaths from diseases that we know the cure) • Why are the answers not getting through? • Why are the health services not working? • Focus on Disseminating existing research ideas and results

5. Uptake and Demand Establish an action research programme to explore • Constraints to uptake of research by different groups • Methods of generating effective demand for research • The role for innovative communications techniques

6. International Collaboration • DFID is one funder in a broad field should be seen as part of a collaborative international effort • Little coordination, more coordination and harmonization would yield big gains • Where there is some coordination, there is dominance of research suppliers than users