The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Markets, Risk and Resilience (MRR) has supported long-time partner, the International Centre for Evaluation and Development (ICED) in organizing the sixth Evidence to Action (E2A) Conference, on the theme of “Resilience and Climate Change Adaptation,” which took place last month in Accra, Ghana. 

MRR Global Engagement Manager, Sophie Javers has contributed to the E2A conferences since their launch 7 years ago. “This year’s forum was the most thought-provoking yet,” she said. “The auditorium and breakouts were packed with students, academics, and government officials. As speakers grappled with questions of building resilience to climate change, they kept coming back to the theme of locally-led research as an important part of the answer.”

MRR and ICED co-lead the Feed the Future Advancing Local Leadership, Innovation and Networks (ALL-IN) program, which  supports African researchers in development economics and related fields to take the lead in defining research priorities and managing large-scale research projects, with support from researchers at U.S. universities. The E2A conferences, which gather researchers from across Africa, provide an ideal opportunity for ALL-IN capacity strengthening and knowledge-sharing activities. In Accra, ICED organized special sessions with ALL-IN principal investigators before, during and after the conference. 

FEWS NET Workshop

The American Institutes for Research conducted a training session for ALL-IN researchers. The workshop deepened knowledge of the impacts of climate change on a variety of health and development outcomes. It offered an introductory training for researchers on how to use FEWS NET climate data to integrate with surveys and other population datasets for analysis. 

ALL-IN researcher, John Olwande observed, “The FEWS NET training was a good example of how synergy of expertise from different fields of science – e.g. data science, software engineering, GIS expertise, agricultural economics, statistics, etc. – is necessary for effective problem solving efforts through research.”

Panel on the ALL-IN Model

“Flipping the Traditional Model of Research Collaboration to Close the Evidence to Policy Gap (The ALL-IN Model)” was moderated by Sarah Ameso, Associate Director of ALL-IN. The panel was comprised of ALL-IN principal investigators—Peter Njiforti, John Kuwornu, Mercy Kamau, and Robertson Khataza. The session grew the awareness of conference participants about ALL-IN, as panelists emphasized the value of African-led research for identifying solutions for African communities and countries.  

Sarah Ameso summarized the session: "The ALL-IN principal investigators were able to highlight the benefits of the ALL-IN approach to research in Africa, which include: local researchers being at the forefront of collecting context relevant evidence; the mentorship provided by the US based researchers, which has helped increase their skill sets on research; they have had the opportunity to network and share their research findings in bigger platforms in various international conference across the globe; and one of the young researchers got a scholarship for further studies through the networks build by their mentors."

Ultimately, the panel gave voice to a demand for further initiatives and funding to empower African researchers. 

World Café

This informal session facilitated unstructured conversations among ALL-IN principal investigators, who sat in discussion groups according to the major themes of their research. Without the normal structure of formal presentations—the setting of most of their interactions—researchers shared their research experiences and findings with each other in new ways, leading to new connections and insights. 

The session also included local stakeholders in the research. Ghanaian organizations and policymakers that are collaborators and/or intended users of the data sat in with some of the groups. ALL-IN Associate Director, Sarah Ameso observed, "The session provided an opportunity for the stakeholders to engage deeper into some of the research findings and understand them better. The stakeholders also had an opportunity to give constructive feedback to the researchers."

Resilience Measurement Training

MRR Director, Michael Carter offered a training to ALL-IN researchers on the new Economic Resilience Metric being put forward by MRR. In the session, Carter presented an overview of myriad frameworks currently in use to try to measure resilience, and then made the case that a measure of resilience should draw on actual economic experience amid shock. The Economic Resilience Metric is calculated from cumulative losses and recovery following a shock, providing a single number to quantify how closely a household maintains well-being.

ALL-IN Principal Investigator Mercy Kamau commented on the training: "I found it to be very relevant since it measures what we actually mean when we speak of resilience. Going forward I plan to seek opportunities where we can apply this concept."