SAGA Progress Report - 2004 - Institution Building and Technical Assistance

SAGA
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SAGA PROGRESS REPORT (12/03-12/04) &
UPCOMING WORKPLAN (1/05-12/05)

III. INSTITUTION BUILDING AND TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE

A principal goal of SAGA is to strengthen the capacity of the SISERA institutions to conduct high quality research, to do outreach that raises their profile and among national and international policy makers, and to engage in policy dialogue. We believe that building up such local capacity is the only sustainable way to affect the policy dialogue through research. With SAGA support, our partner institutes have produced numerous research papers. They have also organized major national and international conferences; have bid for and won research grants that expand their research resources beyond SAGA’s contribution; and have made significant contributions to the national policy dialogue. The names of our major partners are provided at the SAGA website. Here we highlight several illustrative examples.

From Ghana

Following on discussions started with USAID-Ghana under the umbrella of SAGA, ISSER has now won a $600,000 contract from USAID-Ghana to work on the issue of land tenure over the next three years.
With SAGA’s assistance, ISSER has proposed the Economy of Ghana Network (EGN). The Economy of Ghana Network will develop an interactive website that will be used as the main platform for discussion among members. The Network will initially be managed by ISSER. The proposal has just been approved by the African Capacity Building Foundation for a grant of $300,000 over three years.
With SAGA’s assistance, ISSER organized a major conference on “Ghana at Half Century”, with Ghanaian and international participants. A selection of papers presented will be collected in a volume co-edited by the Director of ISSER.

From South Africa

SAGA is supporting the publication of a volume, Poverty and Policy in Post-Apartheid South Africa, with contributions by leading South Africa researchers. The volume will be co-edited by the Director of DPRU.
Since 2001 DPRU has organized an annual conference on the South African economy. In 2004, SAGA supported DPRU’s efforts to expand this conference to a region-wide forum, held in Capetown. Authors from around the world presented almost 50 papers.

Next Steps

Following on the success of the Cape Town conference, the World Bank has agreed to take the lead in funding another Africa-wide conference, this time to be hosted by our partner in Ghana, ISSER.

In Uganda, EPRC has leveraged SAGA support to fund a major conference on Uganda’s economic progress and prospects, to be held in early 2005, with co-financing from the Bank of Uganda and the World Bank. SAGA-funded research (discussed above) provide the basis for presentations on poverty reduction, vulnerability, and progress toward the MDGs.

From Madagascar

In Madagascar, we have been extensively involved with our major research partners, Institut National de la Statistique (INSTAT) and the Ministry of Education, in a wide range of capacity building activities. Highlights of this have included:

Researchers at INSTAT visiting Cornell in November 2004 to work on the preparation of analysis files for a national health survey.
In preparation for the upcoming national education survey, five Malagasy researchers visited Cornell in February and March of 2004.
Christelle Dumas, from the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), Paris, France, provided technical assistance on the development of a program of education research, including training for and design and implementation of the major education survey that is part of SAGA’s research program in Madagascar.
Bart Minten continues to work with INSTAT and FOFIFA on a wide range of issues such as training in assessing the benefits of public provided services and the impact of user fees.

Next steps

A series of collaborative and institutional strengthening efforts are planned for the year ahead, beginning with the visit of two members of INSTAT and the Ministry of Education to Cornell University in November for a few weeks to work on the preparation of the preliminary report of our education survey. This will include training in data and policy analysis.

From Kenya

Direct Cornell collaboration with IPAR, Tegemeo, Egerton University and the University of Nairobi on studies related to SAGA themes on empowering the rural poor and on reducing risk and vulnerability in rural Kenya. This has included extended field collaboration between Cornell graduate students and researchers at these institutions and substantive mentoring of SAGA research by these institutions.
The nascent Kenya Policy Research and Outreach Forum (K-PROF), begun in 2002 partly under the auspices of SAGA, has now met several times and is slowly evincing real potential to link policy research to policy formulation in Kenya. K-PROF brings together Kenyan research institutions (e.g., IPAR, KIPPRA, Tegemeo, various universities, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, the Central Bureau of Statistics), and Kenya-based international research institutions (e.g., the International Livestock Research Institute and the World Agroforestry Centre) with government ministries for the purposes of keeping each other informed of recent research findings, of availing government and donors of a range of policy research, and of sparking collaboration in emerging policy research issues.

III.1. The Small Grants Program

The Small Grants Program of SAGA has awarded 21 individuals with research grants (http://www.saga.cau.edu). Thirteen students (5 women) and 7 faculty (2 women). Tangible outputs from these collaborative research efforts include:

Applied research in collaboration with individuals in the host institutions (confirmed by those Directors who had the opportunity to host a Small Grants researcher during the annual meeting).
Dissemination of research results through exit seminars at the host institutions, and papers/reports and publications.
Continued collaboration/communication between the U.S.-based principal researcher and both senior and junior researchers at the host institution.
Creating databases for the host institution.
Completion of Ph.D. degrees and subsequent publications.

Next steps

In an effort to ensure a successful research experience for the awardees, we remain in contact with those still in the field as well as with those still completing their final reports on their projects. This requires us to not only be a backstop for all awardees who are either in the field or have returned in collaboration with the SISERA host institutions but also to follow up on deliverables and distribution of project outputs.

More specifically we plan to:

Advertise the opportunities under the Small Research Grant Program;
Receive, process, and evaluate/review proposals;
Coordinate the visit of the recipients with the research institution;
Process and coordinate the return of all awardees from Year 2;
Follow up and assemble all final reports and other papers from all Year 2 awardees;
Conduct/complete follow up surveys with the Awardees and their respective host institutions (i.e., we will use the survey instrument used in Year 1); and
Post all grantees’ research papers on the web.

III.2 Technical Assistance

SAGA’s technical assistance activities include support to SISERA’s own SAGA-funded research competition, posting of Cornell staff for extended periods at collaborating institutions, and training workshops. Highlights include:

SISERA Research Support

Until recently, SISERA has funded research at its member institutions through a competitive grants program. In support of that program, we have reviewed 52 proposals submitted to SISERA and, where appropriate, provided coaching to the researchers to improve their proposals before they are sent for external review. With SISERA’s demise, this activity will now cease.

From South Africa

In 2003, DPRU and Cornell gave a two-week workshop on poverty and inequality analysis for the faculty of South Africa’s Historically Disadvantaged Universities. While SAGA financed some of the time of the Cornell participants, the bulk of the costs were met by USAID-South Africa and other donors.
Upon hearing the feedback from the 2003 course, the South African Governments’ Department of Social Development (DSD) and the National Treasury asked for the course to be provided to their staff as well, paid for by the government’s own funds. This course was duly given in 2004. As a result of this, DPRU got an “entré” into DSD, and they have now been asked to do a major analysis of social transfers for the Department.

From Uganda

Cornell and EPRC ran an intensive two-week training workshop on poverty analysis for researchers from various government ministries, several departments at Makerere University, EPRC itself, and SISERA institutions in Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia.

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