1. Official Development Assistance in Practice: reflections from DFID-ESRC Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research
Anne Tallontire

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

3. 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 3

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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”

9. 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

10. 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?

11. Further resources from the Impact Initiative