Technical: Evaluation Strategy - Research into Use Programme (Southern Africa Region)

Consultancy: Advisory in Evaluation and Communications, for the Research into Use programme. (2021)

Support for Southern African country office staff and stakeholder about evaluation systems and frameworks for understanding policy influence within the agricultural sector as well as other sectors.

The Research Into Use (RIU) programme was a key initiative by the Department for International Development (DFID) aimed at scaling up successful innovations, primarily from agricultural research, and ensuring their wider application and impact. The core objective of the RIU was to find ways to take innovations, especially from the DFID-funded suite of programmes on Renewable Natural Resources (RNRRS) (1995-2006), and put them into widespread use.

Shift in Focus: This represented a new approach for DFID, moving away from solely funding the generation of new technologies to emphasizing the uptake and application of existing research findings. The programme recognized the growing importance of agricultural innovation to meet the unprecedented challenges of feeding a rising global population sustainably in the face of climate change.

The RIU was a large and complex programme, involving various activities and approaches to facilitate the uptake of research. This included ensuring research questions were relevant to potential users, effective communication and dissemination of research findings, and repackaging research for diverse audiences. A crucial aspect involved building the capacity and commitment of research users (policymakers, practitioners, and intermediaries) to access, evaluate, synthesize, and ultimately utilize research evidence in their decision-making processes.

The programme included a significant component of research and evaluation to understand what works to improve research uptake and to develop and test new approaches and methodologies for evaluating research uptake.