Impact case study database

Barrientos’ ‘engaged scholarship’ has achieved a far-reaching impact on advancing companies’ gender strategies implemented across their supply chains. In brief, this research has resulted in beneficial outcomes for workers in the GVCs of Mondelez (a total of 124,318 smallholder farmers) and Nike (over 270,000 workers), and greater opportunities for gender equality for over 1 million workers in M&S’s GVC. It has influenced procedural change by Sedex, an international social compliance platform with 60,000 members reaching 33 million workers, to enhance visibility of women workers in global supply chains. Impact has been achieved through a pathway involving mutually reinforcing interaction between Barrientos, companies, civil society organisations and government with three interlinked dimensions:

1. Civil society: Ongoing research (including [2]) highlighting poor conditions and rights of women workers informed civil society advocacy and campaign strategies, including the following case examples.

Oxfam: Barrientos’ research has involved ongoing collaboration with Oxfam since 2004 and she has advised the organisation on a number of public campaigns advocating gender equality in retailer GVCs. This advisory work includes a recent campaign Behind the Barcode (2018), which ranked supermarkets on a number of criteria including gender. Oxfam states: “ Barrientos’ research influenced the wording of the indicators in the supermarket assessment tool which forms the basis of the Supermarket Scorecard…During the first year of the campaign, supermarkets’ average total score against the indicators on women increased…Tesco and Ahold Delhaize have made improvements and, together with Wal-Mart, have taken steps to uphold the rights of women in their supply chains. Oxfam will continue to work with suppliers to end discrimination against women” [A]. The campaign influenced other companies to follow suit.

Ethical Trading Initiative: Barrientos secured a secondment to ETI (0.4FTE) funded by an ESRC Impact Acceleration Account award in 2017. ETI is a leading alliance of 100 UK companies (combined turnover over GBP166,000,000,000), 17 NGOs and 4 union federations that promotes respect for workers’ rights in member company value chains globally. The research collaboration aimed to influence the development and advancing of ETI’s gender strategy to drive gender equality in company member value chains by 2020. ETI’s Executive Director stated: “ This collaboration has been instrumental in enabling ETI to raise the profile of the initiative and of gender equality more broadly among corporate, trade union and civil society members. Collaborating with one of the foremost experts on gender and ethical issues in global supply chains has lent increased credibility to this initiative and has increased appetite for participation and ultimately for moving forward in this area. This is especially important as Gender has not been high on the agenda of our corporate members in recent years and we are in the process of launching our new Gender Strategy” [B].

2. Companies: Building on the momentum created by her research and this enabling policy environment, Barrientos has also undertaken extensive engagements with M&S, Nike and Mondelez/Cadbury that have resulted in demonstrable direct improvements to conditions and opportunities for gender equality for over a million workers.

Marks & Spencer (M&S): M&S’s Ethical Trading Manager served on the advisory committee of the Capturing the Gains programme, participated in the ETI gender analysis and subsequently participated in the WOW programme (see below). She has stated: “Findings from your research in African flowers and Bangladesh garments under ‘Capturing the Gains’ influenced our decision to include more gender sensitive indicators in the revision of M&S Global Sourcing Principles (GSP) in December 2014. We were also grateful for your advice on design of the final gender indicators incorporated. The GSP determine the conditions of supply to M&S and [are] applied to approximately 2000 suppliers employing one million workers in the M&S supply chain. Inclusion of gender indicators helped to sensitise our suppliers to the need for more equitable employment practices” [C].

Nike: Barrientos advised Nike’s Worker Engagement and Wellbeing (EWB) pilot and undertook subsequent research on a pilot garment factory in Indonesia. Enhancing women’s voices led to practical changes, benefiting women and business. For example, providing a relief team to cover for women workers when their children are sick, led to higher productivity on the line, more than covering the costs of this innovation, which also resulted in 22% of women workers reported feeling better valued [2: ch. 8]. [Text removed for publication][D].

Mondelez/Cadbury: The research undertaken by Barrientos, at the start of the Cadbury Cocoa Partnership in 2008, led to gender equality and women’s empowerment being the foundation of the Cocoa Life programme established by Mondelez International in 2012, with gender defined as a key cross-cutting theme [E,F]. Its Cocoa Life Director reports that “Barrientos’ research has been critical for us at a time of increasing concern about the future sustainability of cocoa production...Informed by Barrientos’ research, Cocoa Life promotes gender equality across all five pillars of the programme (farming, communities, livelihoods, environment)” [E]. So far, the Cocoa Life programme has “impacted women in over 1,000 cocoa communities. The program provides 50,000 women annually with access to finance to fund education and encourage entrepreneurship, to give them a voice and unlock their potential. By the end of 2018, an additional 74,318 community members have been trained in gender awareness to change perceptions, attitudes and behaviours, to help address gender inequalities. Evidence of the benefits of Cocoa Life in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire also indicates increased cocoa yields, improved incomes, better investments in children’s education and greater participation in decision making” [E].

**3. Government and WOW programme: Following Capturing the Gains, Barrientos was invited to join an advisory group to the Secretary of State (SoS) for International Development on DFID input into the UN High Level Panel (UNHLP) on Women’s Economic Empowerment (2016). Barrientos co-hosted a public consultation meeting addressed by the SoS at the University of Manchester [G]. DFID subsequently launched a GBP10,000,000 programme on Work and Opportunities for Women (WOW) in global value chains, citing Capturing the Gains research in its terms of reference [H]. The overall aim of WOW is to promote the economic empowerment of 300,000 women in supply chains by 2023. Barrientos was part of the winning consortium managed by PwC, and is WOW research lead. Examples of WOW research’s impact include:

M&S: Barrientos is collaborating with 3 UK companies (all high-street retail chains, including M&S which agreed to be named publicly) on enhancing the collection, recording and reporting of gender data and information in their supply chains. Barrientos’ collaboration with M&S under Capturing the Gains, ETI and the WOW programme has resulted in changes enhancing the visibility and leadership of women workers in their global supply chain. This is shown in a letter from M&S’s Ethical Trade Manager to Barrientos: “ Your research (synthesised in your book Gender and Work in Global Value Chains), and the ETI gender analysis, has highlighted the benefits to workers and business of promoting women’s leadership. This, along with launch of the DFID WOW programme, influenced M&S decision in 2017/8 to include a target in Plan A of 25% leadership positions to be occupied by women in the first tier of our supply chain by 2023. Plan A is M&S flagship public commitment to helping build a sustainable future by having a positive impact on wellbeing, communities and the planet through all that we do. Our collaboration with you and WOW colleagues is playing an instrumental role in helping us achieve this target...Our aim is to ensure 80,000 women will be promoted to leadership positions across our global supply chain by 2023” [C].

Sedex: M&S is a member of Sedex, the main industry social compliance platform covering 180 countries, that manages much of its data on workers. M&S publicly announced engagement with WOW, and used learning from the research to encourage Sedex to adopt a gender strategy, to be applied across all members. “ We used insight from WOW to present at the Sedex Stakeholder Membership Forum, making the case for gender disaggregated data to be collected via the Sedex platform. The forum was available to 50,000+ global supplier and buyer organisations. As a result a gender data working group has been formed with the objective of integrating the recommendation into existing Sedex tools” [C]. Barrientos organised a WOW networking workshop in January 2020 (attended by 35 companies, NGOs) at which Sedex’s progress and plans for implementing a Gender Strategy were reported [H]. The plans included a revised Sedex supplier assessment questionnaire, updated supplier workbook, and publication of a gender report. “ Our [Sedex] aim in including more gender data points in the SAQ [Self-Assessment Questionnaire] and Site Profile, is to enhance the visibility of women workers across our 60,000 members. We hope that in doing so, we will improve the data available on approximately 33 million workers over the coming few years….Having the support and input of the WOW brands plus Stephanie’s expertise both ensured Sedex prioritised this project and increased momentum for further work on gender….Gender is now a key focus area in Sedex strategy going forward.” [I]. This focus on gender has significant potential to scale up gender reporting and equality in GVCs internationally.

SMARThealth has been implemented by the Malang district government, and 12,000 people have received treatment. “ The project has significantly reduced preventive cardiovascular disease healthcare disparities and improved community awareness [of] non-communicable diseases in the intervention villages” (SMARThealth Program Co-ordinator, Malang District Health Agency)[A]. Treatment as a result of the intervention led to 3,750 people gaining an extended life expectancy [3]. The research-policy collaboration outlined in Section 2, above, assessed the effectiveness of SMARThealth in East Java, with primary care doctors and kader serving approximately 48,000 people across 8 villages, and is being scaled up to reach 3,000,000 individuals. More generally, the SMARThealth app has been commended by national government [B] and has won support from health-care professionals, communities and academics.

Improved cardiovascular care for individuals

Over a two year period, 12,000 individuals over the age of 40 in 8 villages were screened for heart disease and diabetes, of whom 6,579 were identified as being at high risk of cardiovascular deaths, leading to the prescribed SMARThealth intervention [2,3]. The results indicated a 14.5% reduction in the number of those at high risk, and a 10% reduction in their levels of systolic blood pressure compared to a control group (5%) [2]. The findings, reported in JAMA Cardiology (2019), show a reduction in the risk of cardiovascular deaths by identifying those at risk, prescribing lifestyle and drug interventions (captopril, amlodipine & simvastatin prescribed by doctors), and sharing information with health providers through cloud infrastructure [2] [A].

Based on modelling estimates, SMARThealth has already extended the life expectancy of 3,750 people [2]; 57% of the 6,579 individuals identified as high risk are now using blood pressure-lowering medication, compared to just 16% in villages that did not receive the SMARThealth intervention. Not only are individuals benefitting from access to medication, they also now have access to the most effective combination of medications. 15.5% of high-risk individuals now use the most effective combination of blood pressure-lowering medications, including statins and antiplatelet drugs, compared with just 1% in the control villages [2].

Two beneficiaries, one male and one female, offered testimonies via video [C]: “ before SMARThealth, whenever I feel unwell I get drugs from the local kiosk, but since SMARThealth, I have found out that I suffer from high blood pressure and now take part in the programme ” [male]; “I am 54 but I was not aware that I suffer from high blood pressure until the [SMARThealth programme] ” [female]. The programme will continue to benefit 3,000,000 residents in the Malang district [C] and save many more lives in future.

Enhanced community health care

The SMARThealth programme has been adopted by the district of Malang as its own public health programme, and is being made available to 3,000,000 residents in the region. In conducting the research, kaders living in the communities were identified by the research-policy collaboration as key field partners, a role they had not previously played. Their traditional role is to support infant and maternal health but, with training and support from the SMARThealth app, they were able to provide effective cardiovascular screening, thereby forming a key bridge to local communities and ensuring that cardiovascular risk is managed and care needs met at community level [C,D].

A major socio-medical challenge was to ensure adult villagers respected the kaders, who were previously dealing with infants. The kaders’ central role in the intervention and their link with doctors via the app has boosted their status within the community [C]. The data are also used by the health authority to supply drugs, reinforcing the kaders’ legitimacy across the health system.

Government adoption

Research impact was scaled up from the local (i.e. village) level to the regional level (i.e. multiple villages) through adoption of the SMARThealth programme by the district of Malang in 2019 as part of its public health programme, which resulted in an additional 24,000 adults having been screened by August 2019 [E]. A video of Dr Tampubolon explaining the risk of cardiovascular disease and how to treat it in community settings is now being used in staff training for the Malang district health authority. Previously such exposure and awareness had often been fatally lacking [F].

Malang’s District Government has adopted the estimates of cardiovascular risk as its basis for budgeting for secondary prevention drugs for cardiovascular disease. The SMARThealth Program Co-ordinator wrote, “ I can confirm that the District Health Agency in Malang will allocate funding for implementation. Specifically, the District Health Authority will fund costs associated with health promotion, training, and equipment for the relevant workforce as well as medications” [A].

In order to continue scaling up the programme, the Malang District Government committed to funding to ensure the sustainability of the intervention beyond the original research allocation that ended in 2018. The IDR1,000,000,000,000 (GBP50,000,000) sum for basic services, including non-communicable disease intervention, committed by the Regent (elected district head) was reported in the local newspaper, Radar Malang [G]. The intervention was awarded the national Innovative Government Award 2019 in the category of best app for public service [B,H].

The University of Brawijaya has committed to its collaboration with the village communities in which it undertook the initial research, thereby helping to ensure the sustainability of the resulting interventions. This new round of research–policy collaboration enables the collection of fresh data pertaining to survival and deaths from cardiovascular disease; this longitudinal extension to the work will enable the research team to strengthen the evidence base beyond ascertaining the impact of the intervention programme on enhancing the control of blood pressure to an evaluation of its efficacy in reducing the number of fatalities. The Dean detailed specific responsibilities, including “ performing the research together with the partners [the George Institute and the University of Manchester] and Malang district health [authority]… and disseminat[ing] the research findings to providers of services to older people” [I].

The scale up of intervention has continued despite Covid-19, with kaders receiving personal protective equipment to carry out their role safely [J].

Agarwal’s research and its dissemination have generated four specific forms of impact, the most recent being in safeguarding livelihoods during the Covid-19 crisis.

Initiation of group farming among poor farmers in eastern India and Nepal

In 2015, Agarwal’s research [1,2] provided the model for the design of a new action-research project on group farming in eastern India and Nepal by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) Nepal. As the project head confirms : “Our aim was to identify farming models to address some of the challenges of landlordism, fragmentation and tenure insecurity through farmer collectives. Agarwal’s papers [1,2] on the potential advantages of group farming collectives and the principles on which they should be formed was…extremely useful in helping us shape our…models. In project design, we followed the principles specified by Agarwal, ensuring that the groups were voluntarily formed, small-sized, and had systems in place for egalitarian decision-making and equal distribution of workloads and benefits.” [A]. Within a year, 20 farmers’ collectives involving some 140 farmers were operating in eastern India and Nepal. The degree of resource pooling varied, but all the collectives reported early economic benefits.

Under IWMI’s oversight and support, and using a co-partnership model, the project was implemented by local NGOs, who also collected baseline data and periodic (seasonal) impact data.

After its launch, although not involved in the data collection, Agarwal provided key inputs into the project:

• She helped analyse the impact data and was a co-author in the resultant publication [B].

• She gave expert advice to IWMI and the NGO partners on how to strengthen social inclusion, gender balance and institutional sustainability.

The data analysis revealed several positive benefits of forming farmers’ collectives [B].

First, it enabled farmers to challenge feudal relations

The poor farmers who formed collectives now have greater bargaining power vis-à-vis the landlords from whom they lease land, than they had individually. One Bihar group with 7 farmers bargained down the rent from about INR12,000 to INR10,000 per acre. Another refused to provide the landlord unpaid domestic services which were earlier obligatory, or to allow the landlord’s family to gather vegetables from their fields without payment [B].

Second, it provided access to government schemes

In Nepal, three groups combined to claim government entitlements, such as seed and fertiliser subsidies offered to cooperatives with at least 20 members. [B]

Third, it provided economic benefits

All the collectives reported that cultivating a large contiguous plot created by land pooling, rather than multiple scattered plots, had made irrigation and tractor use feasible (whereas previously, it was time consuming to move heavy pumpsets between distant plots, and often difficult even to use electric pumps without a nearby power source). In all cases, machine use is now much greater, efficiency of use is higher, the amount of uncultivated area is lower, and crop yields have increased significantly. In both Nepal and Bihar the pre-monsoon fallow area fell from 96-97% to 44%. In all collectives, rice and wheat yields rose; indeed, in some Nepal collectives rice yields rose to thrice their pre-collective period, and in some Bihar groups wheat yields almost doubled [B]. Similarly, labour pooling within groups has helped overcome manpower shortages in peak seasons. As a farmer in Saptari, Nepal, said , “It took me three days to complete one field task. With the group it takes just half a day or a day” [B]. The groups also reported cost reductions from bulk purchase of fertilisers and seeds, and shared transportation of output [B].

Fourth, it increased women’s skills

The collectives have given previously marginalised women visibility, economic and managerial autonomy, and new skills. Two all-women collectives report operating irrigation pumps, something denied to them earlier. One woman stated: “ When we were girls, we were not allowed to even ride bicycles…I have learned…to cycle and to write. Similarly, I have learnt to operate pumps and spray machines.” The women now also perform formerly ‘male’ tasks, such as negotiating with tractor operators or ploughmen [B].

In 2017, Dr Sugden, then head of the IWMI, invited Agarwal to a workshop in Bihar, attended by group farm members and NGO representatives implementing the project in all three sites (Bihar, Bengal and Nepal). Agarwal made several suggestions for improvement, drawing on her research [2,3,4], such as improving the gender-balance in mixed-gender groups, and creating a federation-like organisational structure to help the groups resist external pressures and ensure sustainability.

The first suggestion was taken up immediately, with positive results: “ Following her [Agarwal’s] suggestion we interviewed Monila who was landless, and found that she was indeed feeling disempowered (she was the only woman in her group). We added another woman suggested by Monila…This case also alerted us on the need to nudge groups to be more gender-inclusive” [A]. The second suggestion will be implemented in Phase II of the project: “ We have taken that recommendation on board and will be building this structure…starting later this year” [A].

Women also gained in other respects. As an illustration, Monila gained control over her inherited land after joining the farmers’ collective: “I had been demanding my portion for 8–9 years and finally I received it in 2017. This happened due to my active participation in the collective” [C].

Initiation of group farming by poor women in Gujarat

In August 2018, as requested by Indian NGOs, including a pan-India women farmers’ network (MAAKAM), Agarwal conducted a two-day workshop to share lessons from her research. As a result, one NGO, which had failed earlier, started 16 new group farms involving 92 poor tribal women. “ Our learning at the workshop [helped] us revive group farming…the women farmers became highly motivated…16 groups have [now] started group farming. This is the largest such attempt…in South Gujarat...Prof. Agarwal’s research and workshop…set in motion a process for… transforming the lives of large numbers of disadvantaged women” [D].

Inclusion of more caste-disadvantaged women in a group farming programme in Kerala, South India (site of original research)

In Kerala, in 2017, Agarwal presented her research findings and recommendations to the Kudumbashree management. Kudumbashree involves 4.5 million women across all 14 districts of Kerala and is its most important development programme. Kudumbashree’s group farming programme (involving 68,000 women’s groups and over 330,000 women farmers [E]) was the site of Agarwal’s research. Following her presentation, the management team initiated steps to include more poor, low-caste women in group farming: “ Kudumbashree has taken various steps to implement the recommendations suggested by Prof. Agarwal in her detailed analysis…Kudumbashree is now focusing more on inclusion of Scheduled Caste [lowest caste] women in JLGs [group farms] . Also, Kerala witnessed devastating floods in 2018 and more than 25,000 women’s group farms lost their…livelihoods. [Based on Prof. Agarwal’s suggestions] strengthening of group farming…was given highest priority after the floods” [F].

Covid-19 and group farming

The effectiveness of the group farming model was also demonstrated during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. For example, in Kerala, 87% of over 31,000 women’s group farms growing crops in March 2020 were able to harvest and sell their produce [E], whereas large numbers of individual farmers in Kerala and other states were widely reported to have lost their incomes due to labour and marketing bottlenecks [G]. Moreover, the inclusion of more Scheduled Caste women into the groups prior to COVID means that the most disadvantaged women too would have been protected.

In Bihar and Gujarat, similarly, the farmers’ collectives reported that they were more food secure during the COVID-19 lockdown than if they had farmed individually, and compared to individual smallholders in their village [A,D].

These positive outcomes of group farming during an unprecedented crisis can be seen as additional (indirect) impacts of Agarwal’s research.

ESID has significantly improved the extent to which international development agencies grasp the ways in which politics shapes development, and directly steered them towards designing and implementing more contextually relevant and politically feasible interventions to promote inclusive development. Until recently, and by their own admission, major development agencies like the World Bank and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID, now FCDO) were wasting large sums of development aid in pursuit of promoting technocratic and Westernised policy ideas that had little traction in developing countries and sometimes made matters worse. ESID research has had three key impacts:

(a) Transforming how DFID understands and promotes economic development. DFID is one of the largest and most influential international development agencies. It has an annual budget of GBP13,400,000,000 and programmes in all of the world’s poorest countries, with a strong focus on promoting economic development and poverty reduction.

In 2012, ESID research director Kunal Sen combined his new theory on the political dynamics of growth with related work by Lant Pritchett (Harvard). This led to an influential ESID working paper on ‘deals’ in 2012 that underpinned a programme of research in 10 countries, the results of which were later published in 2018 [1]. ESID circulated the paper to governance advisors working within DFID, one of whom invited Sen, Pritchett and others to deliver a series of talks at major DFID learning events, workshops and seminars [A].

Senior officials within DFID report that the ESID ‘deals’ framework transformed the way in which it promotes economic growth in developing countries [A]. ESID’s deals framework has become institutionalised within DFID’s first ever Economic Development Strategy (2017) – its highest-level statement on growth – and in the ‘inclusive growth diagnostic’ that is used to directly inform DFID’s work at country level. Going further, ESID thinking has directly inspired DFID’s first-generation of governance-informed growth programmes.

A key example is the GBP100,000,000 Invest Africa Programme (2017–21), which aims to encourage GBP1,000,000,000 of additional Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into African manufacturing sectors to help kick-start the economic transformation required for sustained poverty reduction. This programme was strongly informed by ESID’s work on the dangers of imposing Western-based regulatory approaches on developing countries; instead ESID proposed channelling investments to the types of firm able to both promote structural transformation and improve the governance environment [A]. ESID’s deals framework “definitely impacted the evidence [DFID] used for the business case for Manufacturing Africa” [A], a GBP22,500,000 part of Invest Africa that aims to create 90,000 new jobs by 2027. The 2019–20 annual review suggests that it is on track to do so, having already supported 40 FDI investments against a target of 29 [B]. ESID research [1] has directly shaped new growth and governance programmes in Ethiopia, Malawi, Nepal, Palestine, Tanzania and Uganda, and the GBP8,000,000 Governance in Action programme in Kyrgyzstan (which has so far formed seven new coalitions to facilitate governance solutions to unblocking constraints to growth, including legislative change to enable textile businesses to access more markets [C]).

ESID’s impact on the promotion of inclusive growth in Africa extends to other policy actors. It was described as of “incredible value to the Africa programme of the Tony Blair Institute [TBI] for Global Change” [D]. TBI’s Africa Advisor states that the deals framework has guided its efforts since 2016 to support 15 African governments in delivering inclusive economic growth with an annual budget of approximately USD16,000,000: *“This work has influenced the establishment of new economic enterprises in countries like Togo (in business process outsourcing which attracted its first 3 investors, worth USD4,400,000 and 1,000 jobs and juice processing 1 investor at USD3,300,000 and 500 targeted jobs); the facilitation of Liberia SME processors of oil palm (USD500,000 investment supporting 1,000 farmers); new investments in car manufacturing in Ghana (involving a USD15,000,000 investment) and in Ethiopia’s efforts to establish an FDI-based pharmaceutical sector (7 deals closed in 2019 and 2020 amounting to USD332,000,000 and estimated to create 4,500 direct jobs)*” [D]. These interventions show how ESID research has enabled DFID and others to support reforms that are feasible within each country’s political settlement, and offer an informed starting point for promoting the process of inclusive growth and structural transformation required for sustained poverty reduction.

(b) Catalysing politically informed programming within DFID’s country-level operations. ESID’s impact on DFID’s country-level operations goes beyond inclusive growth to encompass new approaches to the promotion of better governance and social provisioning. It has had particularly strong impacts in Rwanda and Uganda, in part because ESID researchers discussed their research priorities with in-country DFID officials before embarking on the research and maintained a high-level of engagement with both offices throughout. ESID researchers have produced at least 40 publications reporting on its work pertaining to these countries, offered multiple in-country seminars to DFID staff and been invited to undertake advisory projects and offer advice directly to senior governance advisors and heads of office, all via the ESID ‘power domains’ framework of analysis. As shown below, these efforts have directly shaped DFID’s strategic and programming operations in both countries in ways that have ensured that its approach to promoting inclusive development is now more relevant and politically feasible.

Uganda: After ESID researchers Hickey and Golooba-Mutebi produced an ESID working paper on the politics of development in Uganda in 2013 [2], they were commissioned by DFID-Uganda in 2016 to conduct a major diagnostic study to help guide its strategic review process. This ‘horizon scan’ report was presented to the most senior diplomatic and development officials in Kampala and became integral to DFID’s strategic thinking: “The [2016] report fed into our bilateral aid review and was a great start to that work” [E]. According to DFID’s Governance Advisor in Uganda:

“We relied on this to inform our design process and content for the multi-donor Democratic Governance Facility [DGF] at the time [supported with GBP12,600,000 by DFID between 2012 and 2017] , and to determine realistically what we could or could not achieve programmatically and in our advocacy engagements and policy dialogues…. It also helped to strengthen DGF II scenario-planning and risk management to help the programme to be more resilient and adaptive. The report directly influenced the flexible and adaptive approach to programming within our major anti-corruption programme…. It was central and relevant to our analysis for the Country Development Diagnostic in 2018” [E].

A further political economy analysis undertaken by ESID researchers reshaped the approach of DFID and other donors to working in Uganda’s most marginalised region: it “completely shaped our initial design for a new development programme in Karamoja” [E], namely the Karamoja Nutrition Programme which was worth GBP28,793,116 and targeted at improving governance and poverty reduction for 450,000 people in the region. Hickey’s presentation of the Karamoja report in Kampala (October 2018) had: “a huge impact on us and USAID and Irish Aid [the other major donors to the region] . It changed the discussion about Karamoja. Helped us to think about how to work better in an area of protracted crisis”, including in terms of how to strengthen health systems [E]. The business case for the Karamoja Nutrition Programme cites Hickey et al.’s Karamoja report as a vital contribution to the programme design process; official evaluations show that the programme has directly enhanced health governance and nutrition outcomes in Karamoja, establishing multi-sectoral committees for nutrition in all districts, raising the cure rate from acute malnutrition and significantly reducing the rates of wasting and stunting in children under five [F].

ESID research has also directly shaped government policy in Uganda. ESID researchers Hickey and Matovu were invited to present ESID findings to the Annual Budget Conference in Kampala in January 2014, after they had worked with colleagues from Harvard to produce briefing papers on growth and governance in Uganda and facilitate a training workshop for government officials in December 2012. This this led directly to a focus on structural transformation within the government’s 2014–2015 Annual Budget and to an emphasis on both transformation and government implementation capacity in the subsequent National Development Plan 2015–2020 [G].

Rwanda: DFID’s Senior Governance Advisor in Rwanda testifies that ESID research has had a powerful impact on how DFID has promoted improved levels of governance and poverty reduction in the country [G]. ESID’s impact has occurred through the same pathways identified above for Uganda, namely the production of rigorous, policy-engaged research [e.g. 3,4] that is shared directly and iteratively with policy makers. ESID research, particularly its research on public sector reform and growth [5], has clearly shaped DFID-Rwanda’s overall strategic direction and its specific programmatic interventions. In the words of a DFID-Rwanda advisor, this body of work “very much influenced our strategic thinking and 5 year planning in 2016” [H]. It has also significantly changed DFID’s work on public financial management in particular, leading to a new focus on performance management through a GBP20,100,000 project on local public financial management and revenue collection in Rwanda [H].

ESID’s work on how politics was undermining the quality of primary education in Rwanda [3] has also been influential, directly shaping the development of DFID’s GBP9,600,000 Learning for All programme (2015–21). The programme aims to achieve more equitable access to education, reduced drop-out rates and improved learning outcomes, with the primary beneficiaries being children and young people. By 2019 the programme had already supported almost three million learners and trained over 75,000 teachers, well exceeding the initial target of 25,000. A former DFID advisor on education in Rwanda discusses how ESID’s findings directly shaped their approach:

“By having an in-depth understanding of the political economy of primary education, we could ensure that our investments were targeted at the right areas, and in line with the incentive structure of the Government. An example of this is the need for the programme to target quality, and work at the local level, which was highlighted in the paper [3] ; as well as the disconnect between the education responsibilities of the local education officers, and their reporting lines through the Ministry of Local Government – this led us to task our suppliers to develop solutions to support the officers to ensure their education support was prioritised, while at the same time we worked with the Ministry to try to ensure there were clear lines of accountability and cascading of any changes” [H].

There are also multiple citations of ESID’s work in Rwanda’s most influential policy document, Future Drivers of Growth in Rwanda: Innovation, Integration, Agglomeration and Competition (co-authored by the World Bank and Government of Rwanda), which lays out the government’s strategy for reaching upper-middle-income status and virtually eliminating extreme poverty by 2035 [H]. In both Rwanda and Uganda, ESID reports are used to induct new staff, helping to attune them to the political realities of their new working context.

(c) Embedding political analysis within international development strategies and policies. ESID research [1,3] was incorporated into successive World Bank World Development Reports (WDR), on Governance in 2017 and on Education in 2018, which have gone on to influence World Bank initiatives in many countries [I,J]. ESID research on the political economy of social protection [4] has been particularly influential: it provided the basis for a new World Bank report on Social Safety Nets in Africa [K] and for the strategic approaches of UNICEF and World Food Programme via invited keynote presentations by Hickey. According to one leading governance advisor: “I used [ESID’s] work consistently during my years at the World Bank and in my current role with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade [DFAT] . In several areas, ESID has been leading global development thinking rather than just translating that thinking into practice” [L]. Within DFAT, the deals approach directly informed the diagnostic tool that provides the methodology for country diagnostics, and ESID “research in thematic areas like education, natural resources, health and social protection has also been extremely valuable in presenting accessible and operationally relevant material that we have disseminated to sectoral staff” [L]. In addition to the specific impacts on DFID noted above, ESID work [6] directly shaped DFID’s New Position paper on Governance (2018) and DFID’s political economy analysis (PEA) training for advisors via the ‘Informal beginner’s guide to PEA’.

As such, ESID has played an important role in ensuring that international development policy and practice has become increasingly well-informed by political economy analysis in ways that have led to more relevant and feasible operational approaches to promoting inclusive growth and poverty reduction. This has been achieved as part of a wider movement to promote the importance of ‘thinking and working politically, an epistemic community that ESID has made distinctive contributions to and which it helps to convene; this was evidenced by ESID’s major international conference in 2019, which attracted the key thought leaders and 200 delegates from the relevant academic and policy communities.