SAGA Progress Report - 2006

SAGA
B16 MVR Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
(607) 255-8931
Fax (607) 255-0178
saga@cornell.edu

SAGA PROGRESS REPORT (12/05-12/06) &
UPCOMING WORKPLAN (11/06-11/07)

I. INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY

Strategies and Analyses for Growth and Access (SAGA) is a multi-year cooperative agreement between USAID and Cornell and Clark-Atlanta Universities. SAGA has three core objectives:

To advance understanding of poverty and poverty reduction in Africa through high quality research in four broad areas: (i) schooling, education and human capital, (ii) health and nutrition, (iii) risk, vulnerability and poverty dynamics, and (iv) empowerment and institutions.
To build capacity in African economic research institutions to undertake such research.
To ensure that research informs the policy process in African countries and in USAID.

Although some of our activities are multi-country in nature, most are focused on a set of specific core countries: Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda. These were selected after extensive consultation with USAID missions, potential collaborating research institutions in-country, and local policy makers. The main modality of our activities is through collaboration with African partner institutions in the SISERA network, which in our core countries are:

Ghana: Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research, University of Ghana (ISSER)

Kenya: Institute of Policy Analysis and Research, Nairobi, Kenya (IPAR)

Madagascar: Institut National de la Statistique (INSTAT)*

South Africa: Development Policy Research Unit, University of Cape Town (DPRU)

Uganda: Economic Policy Research Center (EPRC)

Senegal: Centre de Recherche en Economie Appliquée (CREA)

We conduct research, dissemination and policy outreach in partnership.
We offer technical assistance to develop research proposals, evaluate research, conduct courses, and more generally to help to raise the partner SISERA institutions’ profiles nationally and internationally.
We run a small grants program that helps to post U.S.-based researchers to research institutions in Africa.

This report summarizes our achievements and future plans for each of our core objectives of research, institution building, and policy outreach. We note at the outset that these divisions are somewhat arbitrary and artificial. By design, most SAGA activities address more than one since the local SISERA institution is no longer part of the network owing to its demise. objective. When a research output is co-authored between someone at Cornell and someone at a partner institution, it builds capacity (at both institutions). When such a paper is presented to policy makers in a workshop, it raises the profile of our partner institutions. Despite these obvious synergies, we organize this report along the lines of objectives to keep the focus on SAGA’s goals.

*Note that INSTAT is not a SISERA institution, but has become the focal point of our institutional collaboration.

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Return to 2006 SAGA Annual Report and Workplan for 2007