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