The role of research

The UK government believes that research is essential for understanding and tackling world poverty.

We will spend up to £1 billion on research from 2008-2013. You can read more about how we will spend this money in our Research strategy.

The role of research is to provide evidence that can shape development policies and programmes – not just ours, but across the world.

Using evidence in policy and practice means that the decisions we make, and the work we do, will have a greater impact in the fight against poverty and in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Research areas

Our research focuses on six areas – you can read more about them in our Research Strategy:

Growth

We know that growth is even more important in reducing poverty than was previously thought, and we want to put it at the heart of international development. Our new International Growth Centre will introduce a major new research programme to support individual countries with their growth strategies. Our research will also address questions that matter across countries and regions for building an economy that poor people can take part in, as well as growth that can be sustained for future generations.

Sustainable Agriculture

The livelihoods of 75% of the world’s poor will continue to depend on agriculture for the foreseeable future. At the same time, rising food prices are likely to make problems of hunger and poverty worse for urban and rural people. Research that produces innovation in agriculture is therefore more important than ever for reducing poverty.

Climate change

Climate change is likely to have enormous social, political, economic and environmental consequences. We know that it will affect poor countries first
and worst, and that the poorest people will be most exposed and vulnerable.
We will rapidly expand and diversify our research, as part of a wider effort to tackle climate change across UK government.

Health

The burden of ill health is changing rapidly, and non-communicable diseases are an increasing threat to the majority of the world’s population. Our research will focus on three inter-dependent priorities:

• operational research to make health programmes more effective;
• research on health systems;
• developing drugs and vaccines for HIV and AIDS, TB and malaria and other
  diseases that most affect poor people.

In future, we will use our knowledge of health systems to make sure that more
poor people have more opportunities to use both new and existing medicines
and health technologies.