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"Research for the developing world can generate evidence on the effectiveness of foreign aid, invent new technologies that serve poor people, and strengthen research capabilities in poor countries. How do countries determine which of these policy goals to pursue? Examining the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia reveals how each country established a unique approach to research funding. Programs and grantmaking evolved in response to various expectations across government, tempered by the need to remain credible in the scientific community. This book explores the histories of the UK Department for International Development (DFID), Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR). Looking back, changes in research governance encouraged a shift towards whole-of-government priorities, shorter timeframes for realizing results, and performance predicated on academic productivity and research impact. Whereas funders used to encourage 'small is beautiful' with local experiments in development, today the emphasis is on 'getting to scale' delivering innovation through self-financing models."--

Research for the developing world can create evidence on the effectiveness of foreign aid, invent new technologies to help poor people, and strengthen research in poor countries. How do countries determine which policy goals to pursue? This book answers this question based on the history of research funders in Australia, Canada, and the UK

This work maps the concepts and theories currently used to explain development, where they came from, and where they may be going. It shows how real-life experiences of different countries and organisations have been inspired by, and contributed to, thinking on development.

Scaling-up local innovations in natural resource management (NRM) involves learning that is centred around three themes: promoting local-level innovation, understanding why local innovations work in specific contexts, and reflecting on their relevance in other geographical and social contexts. Successful scaling-up depends in part upon the relationships among multiple stakeholders at different levels around this learning. The experiences of researchers supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) provide insights into four questions: What is scaling-up? Why scale-up? What to scale-up? and How to scale-up? The authors propose that scaling-up is a multi-stakeholder process consisting of five components including: framing the context, promoting participation, fostering learning, strengthening institutions, and disseminating successful experiences. Key bottlenecks to scaling-up are the absence of open communication and the mutual recognition among stakeholders of each other's rights, responsibilities, and roles. (InWent/GIGA)