The International Development Secretary at the launch of DFID's new research centre discusses the importance of research to meet current and future challenges. He also emphasised the need to put results of research into practice to improve quality of life
Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure to be here with you today, and I would like to thank Andy (Sir Andy Haines, Principal, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) for that kind introduction. If I have any criticism of that introduction it is that I think you were too modest in your description of how the new London International Development Centre came about – it is of course greatly thanks to your endeavours that we here together to celebrate the launch of the centre today.
I would also like to thank Jeff Waage and his team for their work in organising today’s event, and I’d particularly like to thank them - and all of you - for your patience in waiting for me today.
The new London International Development Centre, as Andy was saying, will play, I believe, a unique role in the UK development research community - bringing together researchers from disciplines as diverse as international law, economics, pharmacy and education.
A new range of perspectives
In many of these areas, the Bloomsbury Colleges are at the very forefront of development research. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has been at the forefront of both developing and finding the best ways to distribute insecticide treated bed nets as just one example.
This kind of work has helped many countries to dramatically increase the number of households with at least one anti-malarial bed net. For instance in Kenya, where the UK has supported a programme to distribute 11 million bed nets – coverage has increased from nearly zero to two-thirds of all households in recent years.
And closer to home, DFID is supporting the Institute of Education to assess the quality and impact of development awareness teaching in primary, secondary and tertiary education. I believe this kind of work is vital in ensuring that future generations in this country recognise the extent to which they are part of their place in an interconnected world – and the rights and responsibilities that come with that interconnectedness.
But by bringing together the different research disciplines represented here today, the London International Development Centre will represent more than the sum of its parts. It is the range of perspectives in the new centre that will help to ensure that research fully reflects the lives of the people we are trying to help – lives that cannot be subdivided into different intellectual disciplines.
For we know that tackling sickness does not simply require new formats of treatment – but also the trade rules to ensure that treatment can be made at an affordable price and the institutions to ensure that public money goes where it is intended.
The centre will also provide a valuable role as a platform for debate here with London and the UK about issues of vital importance to tackling poverty – such as last Friday’s timely session at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) on food and water security. I’ll say a little more about DFID’s efforts on food security in a moment or two.
Research changes lives
All of us here today know the impact that research has in improving and saving lives. In our lifetime we have seen the eradication of smallpox and the devastating cattle disease known as rinderpest. We are close to ridding the world, thankfully, of polio.
I’m immensely proud that much of this progress has been underpinned by the UK research community working with research partners across the developing world, and often supported by the Department for International Development. But I am in no way complacent – instead I am determined that we build on that strong leadership role.
That’s why we ran a consultation last year to develop a new research strategy. We talked directly to over 1,000 users and producers of research in seven developing countries and the UK, and received over 750 replies to an electronic survey. I’m enormously grateful for the responses we received, and I’d like to thank those of you who contributed.
Today I am therefore launching the result of that worldwide conversation - DFID’s first five year strategy for research. It confirms that the UK will become the leading donor country for development research – with an investment, I can announce today, of over £1 billion over the next five years.
The sheer scale of this investment, together with the research expertise represented in this room will, I believe, put the United Kingdom at the forefront of research for development literally around the world.
Yet with the opportunity this affords comes a heavy responsibility – to ensure that research provides the hard evidence we need to make an impact on the lives of the poorest people anywhere on the planet. I will say more in due course about how DFID will change the way we work with you and others to ensure that we put research to the best possible use.
Global challenges and opportunities
But first, I’d like to say a little about the six themes that will form the body of our research over the next five years. They are:
* Climate change
* Agriculture
* Growth
* Health
* Governance in challenging environment and
* Longer term development opportunities.
Because of limited time, and with thanks to your forbearance, I can only give a flavour of how we will work in each of these areas – the full strategy, available from our website from today, gives a much fuller and comprehensive picture. As with the London International Development Centre, these themes will be woven together to reflect the interconnected nature of the opportunities and yes the challenges facing poor people around the world.
For example the recent and sharp rise in the global price of food is just one such challenge. We know that climbing prices are hitting the poorest the hardest – indeed the number of people facing hunger is growing for the first time in decades.
Which in part explains why, later this afternoon, I will chair a meeting at Number 10 to discuss the international community’s response to rising food prices. My colleagues from across government, including the Prime Minister and Hilary Benn, will be present, as will leading experts from the UK research community – including Andrew Dorward, Paul Collier and Simon Maxwell.
And because this is a global problem that requires global solutions, Kanayo Nwanze from the International Fund for Agricultural Development, Donald Kaberuka of the African Development Bank and Josette Sheeran from the World Food Programme will also take part in the meeting this afternoon.
We will together discuss both the action needed now to help the world’s poorest people to cope, and the steps needed to address the underlying causes of the current hardship. The United Kingdom will play our part in an international effort on both of these fronts.
Stimulating economic growth
Indeed I can announce today that the United Kingdom is pledging £30 million to support the World Food Programme’s work in some of the countries most affected by that food price inflation – including Zimbabwe, Somalia and Kenya. We will also provide £25 million this year for social protection in Ethiopia – where food prices have risen by almost a third.
Beyond such immediate action, research will play an important part of our longer-term response. We will need knowledge and research to improve agricultural productivity as the world’s population continues to grow; to support those farmers adapting to a changing environment; and to increase prosperity among the poorest people in the world.
So I can confirm today that DFID will invest £400 million in the next five years for research on agriculture, fisheries and forestry. Such funding makes a real difference. The new rice for Africa supported by the Department for International Development, helped to increase rice production across Africa last year by 6% to 22 million tonnes.
I announced just back in February this year that DFID will invest £100 million over the next five years for research into the science, as well as the social and economic impact, of climate change for the most vulnerable developing countries.
And our research will contain a major new strand on economic growth, including - as I announced last month - an investment of at least £37 million over the next three years to establish a new international growth centre. This network of world experts – from academics to investors – will support governments to address their own particular growth needs, in many cases stimulating agricultural and rural growth.
Identifying future challenges
Our second new research strand - alongside growth – is for more anticipatory research to identify future challenges and opportunities facing developing countries, to ensure an earlier response. This is something that many of you wanted us to do more on – and this was reflected in the consultation we held. And it will be vital as both an early warning system for future challenges of the magnitude of rising food prices, and to establish what benefit can be brought for the poorest from new technologies and emerging trends.
One of the strong messages that came back from that consultation was the high value put on DFID’s research into health systems – and that is in no small part thanks to the work of Professor Ann Mills and Dr Kara Hanson and their colleagues here today.
We will continue our research into health systems. We will also continue research to counter one of the greatest inequities in today’s world - that just ten per cent of the global research on health is carried out on diseases which affect 90% of the world’s population.
And we will also continue to invest in research to find new ways of tackling the toughest social and governance problems in the most fragile and challenging environments. Because, even considering the globalisation of trade, and the cross border issues of disease and climate change, the most important actors in deciding the future of developing countries are still the governments, institutions and citizens of those self-same countries.
Putting research into use – ensuring uptake and impact
As I said a little earlier, I believe that this substantial increase in funding for research brings both opportunity and responsibility.
And the resounding message that we heard from developing countries in our consultation is that we need to do more to make global development research more relevant to their particular needs. To ensure that the research we fund is properly focused on outcomes: making better policy; influencing our partners; and ultimately tackling poverty.
It seems a truism to say that the focus of development research must be to ensure development impact. But I believe – and our consultation confirmed - that too often that it is still not the case. We need to change values and incentives.
Many of the policy problems facing developing countries are not new. Providing clean water. Building infrastructure. Delivering quality education. We don’t need new answers, we often just need to apply the answers we already have.
Yet new answers are what the research community thrives on – to be published, to be noticed, requires researchers to be original and interesting. And the risk is carving out an academic niche in one area when the real priorities for reducing poverty perhaps lie elsewhere.
Ensuring research is effective
So my commitment is that DFID’s research funding in all of the areas I have mentioned will have as its objective the joining of research with policy and practice – to make a real difference on the ground. And that means not only commissioning new research, but looking at what knowledge already exists, and making it newly relevant.
To ensure that research is relevant and put to best use, we will change how we work internally, and with our partners, in three ways.
Firstly, we will strengthen our capacity to better guide and manage research and ensure research results are widely known about and more likely to be used. We will do this both in the UK and in developing countries.
Secondly, we will create a new service to promote and communicate results, to better get more of your findings to those who need to know them at the right time and in the right way.
Thirdly, and I believe most importantly, we will support developing countries to increase their capacity to do, access and use research. This will ensure that research can be put to good use where it is needed. Only by working together as partners can we ensure that research is relevant and yes, put into practice. We must discard any notion that strengthening research capacity somehow means second-rate research.
A partnership within a partnership
Before I pass you on to Jeff, I would just like to reiterate how personally pleased I am to be here today to celebrate the launch of the London International Development Centre.
The spirit of partnership between your colleges in setting up this new venture is exactly the kind of endeavour we need if we are to meet the promises that the world made seven years ago and enshrined in the Millennium Development Goals.
As our own Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has said, we have in the past thought too much that the Millennium Development Goals are something that governments have got to do between themselves. We cannot meet what he called a development emergency without the collective action of governments, the private sector, NGOs, faith groups and yes – researchers.
So I would like to say congratulations on forging this partnership within a partnership. And I would like to wish you the very best in ensuring success for the future. Let us together resolve to reach our common goal. Thank you.