People who work to translate research evidence into effective policy have long critiqued the yawning chasm that separates the research and policy worlds. On one side of the chasm are researchers who generate and interpret evidence. Researchers advance their careers by publishing evidence that appears rigorous enough to achieve publication in high-impact academic journals. On the other side are policymakers who craft policy that is nominally informed by evidence. Policymakers must work within the constraints of what is politically and economically possible. To the extent that policymakers use evidence, that evidence must inform and respond to an issue that is within a particular policy window. The differences in incentives between these two worlds can make “evidence-informed policy” a mere buzzword rather than a reality.
To many, these challenges seem like reasons to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In the United States, for example, politicians have used these and other, similar challenges as a pretext to drastically cut funding for such important funding agencies as USAID, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science foundation. In the case of USAID, the agency has been entirely dismantled. While the US has dominated the headlines, similar cuts have been either proposed or passed across the Global North, including such countries as the Netherlands, France, the UK, Belgium, Australia, and Germany. These events are sending shockwaves through the entire global ecosystem that supports evidence-based policymaking and development.
Evidence-based policy-making requires the pragmatic use of both scientific and governance principles, as well as the necessary acumen to translate complex evidence into clear and persuasive stories. This process therefore requires collaboration across traditional sectoral, geographic, and disciplinary silos. Researchers across multiple fields need to work with policymakers, and such collaboration requires the creation of dedicated spaces for community and reflection. The stories that emerge from such spaces must then be told in ways that are clear and legible to all parties involved.
The Nairobi Evidence Week is one such space. Intended as a venue to foster reflection, commitment, and community, the Evidence Week consists of two conferences, the Africa Evidence Summit from June 23 – 24, a series of internal workshops on June 25, and the Economic Science Association Africa conference from June 26 – 27. The week brings together people from across the research and policy divide to exchange ideas and reflect on their shared values, fostering collaboration, community and resilience in the face of adversity.
The ecosystem supporting evidence-based development and policymaking and development is not without its flaws. In development, scholars and activists alike have long noted that the systems that produce evidence in low and middle-income countries are beset by stark and persistent power imbalances. Due to the concentration of power, prestige, and money in higher-income countries, these power imbalances exclude the very people who are supposed to benefit from evidence-based policymaking and development from evidence-generating processes. The result is poorly scoped research that produces evidence that is not relevant to the policy problems it is supposed to inform. This tendency toward excluding the people who should nominally benefit have prompted some to even critique “evidence-based development” as a soft form of colonialism.
Yet that same ecosystem has also created enormous benefits. US foreign aid saves between 2.3 million and 5.6 million lives per year. One especially noteworthy success is the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS relief, which, by providing access to antiretroviral therapy, may prevent as much as 1.6 million AIDS-related deaths per year. Suddenly and dramatically dismantling the ecosystem that provides such benefits as these with no clear plans for replacement is not a solution, nor would the people within this ecosystem accept this dismantling. Rather, we should take this opportunity to reflect on the values that brought us to work within this ecosystem, reaffirm our commitment to those values, and use those values as guideposts to collectively navigate the challenges we face.
Times of crisis are also times of opportunity. As the United States government withdraws, this withdrawal opens the possibility to correct the very long-standing power imbalances that have long plagued the ecosystem of evidence-based development. As the funding structures that have long powered academic research are disrupted, this opens the possibility to explore new funding models that allow for greater collaboration across the research and policy divide. Thus, times like the present are the times when we most need venues such as the #NairobiEvidenceWeek that foster the community and exchange necessary to seize these opportunities.
