Official Development Assistance in Practice: reflections from DFID-ESRC Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research Anne Tallontire a.m.tallontire@leeds.ac.uk

Background Reflections from DFID-ESRC project (2007-2010) “Lessons from a Decade’s Research on Poverty: Innovation, Engagement and Impact” 16-18 March 2016 in Pretoria

University of Nairobi DFID-ESRC Project: The Governance Implications of Private Standards Initiatives in Agri-food Chains May 2007-April 2010 Explored power relations in private sector standards in export veg & flowers with focus on Kenya- Europe agri-food chains: Who included & excluded in standard setting & implementation Dominant narratives in standards Lack of national/ local contextual understanding & increasing global approach PI: Anne Tallontire, SRI, University of Leeds Grant ref: RES-167-25-0195 3

Private Standards project: findings Takes time to build up Multi-stakeholder standards initiatives; Global solutions are being sought by retailers: frame and/or time-out local MSI Smallholders are excluded from debates on GAP Private standards as ‘invited spaces’, some NGOs pushed out Local politics poorly understood by northern standard

Private Standards project: impacts Enhanced ‘political literacy’ of some NGOs engaging with private standards Support for follow on project from Kenya Flower Council & European NGOs & Ethical Trading Initiative Findings not so palatable to private sector/ retailers or GAP standards Impacts from the project mostly conceptual and capacity related Evidence is from the continuing willingness to continue talking to, working with some key actors Tried to get a follow on grant – supported by ETI, European NGOs – invited to work with UK NGO Women Working World wide Did not ask the retailers to get involved –felt there was a need to translate the findings – far too academic language. Not instrumental impact – come back to these terms later

Lessons Pathways to impact needs to be properly resourced More focus on co-production & capacity building Managing expectations of stakeholders Translation of research outputs for different users/audiences not a trivial exercise

Pretoria conference March 2016 “Lessons from a Decade’s Research on Poverty: Innovation, Engagement and Impact” Project presentations (sample of 139 projects) Workshops, e.g. Collaborative projects, South-South Capacity Building, Further funding Panels

DFID-ESRC Joint Fund programme evaluation Capacity building- technical and personal skills development  Conceptual impact - increased understanding of policy issues and reframing debates  Instrumental impact - influencing the development of policy, practice or service provision, shaping legislation, and altering behaviour drawing on evaluation of 10 years of DFID-ESRC projects: DFID’s view of the evaluation was that this reinforced their view of the importance of “understanding policy contexts, early stakeholder engagement, systematic monitoring of contributions and tailored communication to meet the needs of research users”.  “understanding policy contexts, early stakeholder engagement, systematic monitoring of contributions and tailored communication to meet the needs of research users”

DFID’s call for research with impact Instrumental impact: “Not apologetic” “A curiosity driven approach is unlikely to deliver focussed development impacts” “elevator pitch” “Evidence brokers” In past DFID central office commissioned research and then had task of selling it to country offfices. Frequently not interested Mid 2000s – Research Into Use Programme – translate research from DFID programmes e.g. Crop Post Harvest, Crop Protection, ESCOR into Some things I was involved in at NRI, working with scientific colleagues (often felt like we were the add-on – about implementation or evaluation of a technology). Now more about starting with the analysis of the problems & co-production in the target countries Social Science research more at the core http://www.theimpactinitiative.net/blog/blog-can-research-speak-policy

DFID-ESRC conference: reflections Impact takes time; needs strong foundations & co-production New competencies & diplomacies Contextual knowledge Ongoing & challenges debates: Complexity & caveats overlooked Policy maker receptiveness to unpalatable findings? How to build up capacity?

Further resources from the Impact Initiative http://www.theimpactinitiative.net/