SAGA logo

A project of Cornell and Clark-Atlanta Universities for research and technical assistance
USAID logo Cornell logoCAU logo
SAGA Home
Link to Research
Link to Publications
Link to Technical Assistance
Link to Conferences
Link to Grants
Link to Partners
Link to Project Personnel
Link to Progress Reports
Link to Links Page
Link to Contacts
Link to Search Engine









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)


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
  • We have continued our strong partnership with ISSER, focusing on policy outreach and engagement through conferences, workshops, and policy seminars. One of the main objectives of Cornell’s collaboration with ISSER under the SAGA project has been to help build the capacity of ISSER and to raise its Africa-wide profile, for it, in turn, to build capacity in Ghana on economic and social analysis. Three important markers for this objective are (i) ISSER’s hosting of the Ghana at Half Century conference in July, 2004; (ii) ISSER’s hosting of the Shared Growth in Africa conference in July, 2005; and (iii) the founding of the Economy of Ghana Network (EGN), which will be managed from ISSER, in July, 2005 (http://www.egnghana.org/). All three of these activities have been supported through the Cornell-SAGA project.

    The Economy of Ghana Network provides a platform for disseminating research findings and discussing their policy relevance. It seeks to make easily accessible to a wider audience the findings of all the research being carried out on the socio-economic development of Ghana from the different parts of the globe. One of its objectives is to help capacity building in institutions outside of the concentration of institutions in the capital city, Accra. In particular, it is well recognized that capacity is lacking in the North of the country. The already poor state of academic and analytical infrastructure in the country is exacerbated by the fact that most conferences and events are held in the capital city, with the result that renowned Ghanaian and non-Ghanaian scholars do not visit and tend not to interact with academics and analysts based in Northern institutions.

    In pursuit of the capacity building objective of EGN, ISSER and Cornell held this year a “Northern Roadshow” for the Northern Region, Upper East Region and Upper West Region of Ghana. (See http://www.saga.cornell.edu/saga/gh0906/ghana0906.html). We took a group of persons from ISSER and the Economics Department at the University of Ghana as well as international resource persons from outside Ghana, to the North for discussions at local academic institutions. ISSER’s annual State of the Ghana Economy report was launched for the first time in Tamale in the Northern Region, by the Northern Regional Minister. The team also interacted with the Upper East Regional Minister and with the Faculty and students of the University of Development Studies.

From South Africa

There have been three major activities:
  • First, we completed the book Poverty and Policy in Post Apartheid South Africa, edited by Haroon Bhorat and Ravi Kanbur. The volume was published in 2006 by HSRC Press, a respected South African publisher. The Table of Contents for this volume can be found in Appendix IV.

  • Second, Ravi Kanbur and Steve Younger helped to plan a poverty training workshop organized by the Development Policy Research Unit (DPRU) at the University of Cape Town, a SISERA partner institution, for National Treasury in South Africa. They also participated as guest lecturers in the four-day workshop. A variety of issues were covered, ranging from the theory and proactive of the measurement of poverty and inequality, to labor market and trade-related poverty issues and social security. The workshop was attended by staff who work on these issues from National Treasury and the Presidency. In addition, a roundtable discussion on a social security system for South Africa was attended by officials from these departments, as well as Statistics South Africa and the Department of Social Development, among others. A workshop program is attached in Appendix V.

  • Third, selecting, refereeing, and editing papers for the Cornell/DPRU/TIPS conference on Macro-Micro Linkages in African Growth and Development, for a special issue of the Journal of African Economies, published in December 2006. (http://jae.oxfordjournals.org/content/vol15/issue4/index.dtl)

  • Work was completed on a study which focuses on Grade 12 pass rates across all Grade 12-offering schools in an attempt at providing some estimates on the determinants of these pass rates in the post-apartheid period − through relying conceptually and empirically on a production function approach. With co-financing for our South African colleagues from SISERA and AERC, this involved three South African collaborators from DPRU visiting Cornell. The final paper was presented by our South African colleagues at the AERC Dissemination Conference on Poverty, Income Distribution and Labour Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa, October 12-13, 2006, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

From Uganda
  • SAGA supported a competition for young Ugandan researchers wanting to do research indicated by the Ministry of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development’s (MOFPED’s) Poverty Research Guide. We received 27 proposals, of which we accepted four:

    • Sebaggala, Richard, and John Kikabi, “Wage Determination and Wage Discrimination in Uganda”

    • Nadiope, Moses, Thomas Bwire, and Lazarus Mukasa, “The Determinants of Low Retention Rates in Primary Schools in Uganda: An Econometric Analysis”

    • Akankunda, Denis, “An Assessment of the Causal Relationship Between HIV/AIDS and Poverty in Uganda”

    • Okumu Ibrahim, Alex Nakajjo, Doreen Isoke, “Socioeconomic and Institutional Determinants of Primary School Dropout: The Logistic Model Analysis”


    All authors have recently submitted their first drafts, which will be presented at a workshop in Kampala and revised according to comments received.

  • EPRC completed its report, “Strengthening the understanding of the dynamics of poverty in Northern Uganda,” with support from Steve Younger. Results were presented at a conference in Kampala hosted by the Bank of Uganda and the World Bank in March, 2006. SAGA-funded research provided the basis for presentations on poverty reduction, vulnerability, and progress toward the MDGs.

SISERA Research Support

Steve Younger participated in the final meeting of the SISERA research competition held in January, 2006 in Dakar. Authors presented their research results and planned final revisions with input from Steve and other technical advisors.

III. 1 The Small Grants Program*

As of date, the Small Grants Program (www.saga.cau.edu) of SAGA has awarded 26 individuals with research grants: seventeen (17) students (8 females) and 9 faculties (2 females). All the recipients of the grant were based in one of the member research institutes of the Secretariat for Institutional Support for Economic Research in Africa (SISERA) during their field research period.

Currently, all the awardees, except one, have completed their field research with the SISERA institutions, and returned to their home institutions.

The SISERA institutions participated in hosting these awardees include:
  1. Economic Policy Research Center, Uganda

  2. Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research, Ghana

  3. Economic and Social Research Foundation, Tanzania

  4. Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches en Economie et Gestion, Cameroun

  5. Institute of Policy Analysis and Research, Kenya

  6. Centre de Recherche Economique Appliquéé, Senegal

  7. Institute of Economic and Social Research, Zambia

  8. National Institute of Economic Policy, South Africa

  9. Groupe de recherché en economie appliquéé et théorique, Mali

  10. African Institute of Applied Economics, Nigeria

  11. Botswana Institute for Developmental Policy Analysis, Botswana

  12. Centre d’Orientation et de Recherche en Compétitivité, en Economie et en Décision Organisationnelle, Benin

  13. Centre d’Etudes de Documentation et de Recherche Economique et Sociale, Burkina Faso

  14. Development Policy Research Unit, South Africa

Progress/Activities

We are happy to report that the Small Grants Program of SAGA has been successful in attracting a larger and more diverse pool of applicants. This was due to two factors: (1) the program has been publicized by previous recipients and SAGA members, and (2) our direct advertising through:
  • Letter/Grant Announcement to Department Chairs and Graduate Coordinators to at least two universities in every state in the country. And, in some cases, to individuals that have been in contact with us in previous years;

  • Various issues of the American Economic/Agricultural Economics Associations Newsletter;

  • Distribution of flyers and presentations at various professional annual meetings such as the Allied Social Sciences Association, African Studies, etc.
As a result, we had attracted over 30 proposals for each of the three funding years. However, due to funding limitation we could only select and fund 25 projects (26 PIs).

The deliverables/outputs from these collaborative research efforts included:
  • 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
During this reporting period, our main task has been, as in the past, to ensure a successful research experience for both the awardees and the hosting institutions. We remained in close contact with all the awardees while carrying out their field research as well as with those returned and still completing their final reports on their projects. All but one of the recent recipients have completed their field research and returned to their home institutions (Appendix VI).

In summary, we have devoted a significant amount of the project time on backstopping not only while they were in the field but also to follow up on their deliverables and distribution of project outputs after they have returned.

Follow ups/outputs:

As of this reporting date, all PhD candidate awardees, except one, have completed their degree requirements. And, all awardees have presented their works at various professional forums and are beginning to publish their findings from their SAGA-supported research projects. We continued to monitor their long-term collaborative research efforts with their in-country host institutions – since this is the major interest of the Small Grants Program of SAGA.

Future Tasks (if funds are forthcoming):
  • Continue coordinating the collaborative field research efforts between the awardees and the host SISERA institutions

  • Process and coordinate the return of all awardees including completing any and all financial matters with the awardees

  • Follow up and assemble all final reports and other papers from all awardees

  • Hope to conduct/complete follow up surveys with the Awardees and their respective host institutions (i.e., using the survey instrument developed in previous years)
Update the website appropriately, and advertise the Small Grants Program for the next competitive research grants awards.


*Note: We did not support any project this past funding cycle (2006/2007) due to lack of funding.


Previous Section | Next Section

Return to 2006 SAGA Annual Report and Workplan for 2007


HOME | RESEARCH | PUBLICATIONS | TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE | CONFERENCES | GRANTS | PARTNERS | PROJECT PERSONNEL | PROGRESS REPORTS | LINKS | CONTACT US | SEARCH



© 2017, 2016–2007 SAGA