SAGA Briefing Report
November, 2003

• Review and critique 44 proposals submitted to the SISERA research competition;
  
  
• Uganda Survey Data Analysis Workshop in Fall 2002, brought together researchers from Kenya (IPAR), Tanzania (ESRF), and Uganda (EPRC, various departments at Makerere University, and the Bank of Uganda) to develop skills for survey data analysis. We also included participants in a daylong consultation with government representatives, donors, university faculty, and the press, to define specific policyrelevant research topics for SAGA in Uganda.
  
  
• A Workshop on Poverty and Inequality for faculty at South Africa’s historically disadvantaged universities was held June 23-July 4, 2003, involving 25 participants and staff from Cornell, DPRU, and NIEP.
  
  
• Analytical and Empirical Tools for Poverty Research Workshop on August 16, 2003, in Durban, South Africa, was co-organized by SAGA and the World Bank at the triennial meetings of the International Association of Agricultural Economists. Leading poverty researchers introduced frontier techniques in poverty research, and a panel of scholars discussed research and policy priorities for addressing rural poverty with 110 participants from 22 mostly African countries.
  
  
• Thirteen site visits to SISERA institutes by Cornell researchers to support research activities at those institutes in five countries (Kenya, Ghana, Senegal, South Africa, and Uganda).
  
  
• One example is the technical assistance in Senegal where SAGA provided training in household, community, and school-level questionnaire design to examine education outcomes, planning and design of sampling procedures, and data analysis. The SAGA team worked directly with Centre de Recherche en Economie Appliquée (CREA) researchers, and SAGA’s Leopold Sarr managed and implemented the household survey conducted by the Ministry of Education and CREA.
  
  
• A second example is the mentoring of junior researchers at SISERA institutes by Cornell faculty with the aim of including these young professionals’ research in the SAGA research program.
  
  

Next Section

Return to SAGA Briefing Report (November 2003)