Our Initial Approach – 2011 to 2013

At inception in 2011, PASGR’s Research Programme was anchored on the 18 key thematic issues of the African Union Social Policy Framework. The goal was to enhance relevance of the work through alignment not only to the felt needs of African governments but also to the priorities of the regional body. This led to PASGR’s first research which focused on Social Protection, given its relevance and what was seen as the emerging policy attention that African governments, the African Union and development partners had given to the challenges of inclusiveness and poverty reduction. Throughout the phases of the study, PASGR built-in a process for facilitating active engagements between researchers and policy actors as a way of increasing evidence uptake in policymaking and relevant legislation. Upon completion of the research, a series of policy briefing papers were developed which formed the basis for sustained policy engagement with stakeholders in various countries.

The Watershed Moment – 2014 to 2017

In November 2014, PASGR organised its first Biennial Conference on the theme ‘Social protection in Africa’. The conference brought together 88 participants comprised of researchers, policymakers, practitioners, government representatives as well as representatives from the funding organisations, to share policy-relevant research findings. The expectation was that the recommendations would get policy attention and buy-in from relevant quotas. The discussions that ensued between researchers and policy actors triggered the need for an innovative approach to effective policy engagement. The policy actors showed interest for regular dialogues with researchers for a better understanding of knowledge and policy gaps in specific sectors so that research evidence can help improve policy development and respective programming. The call for regular policy dialogues was again repeated in January 2015 during Kenya’s first Social Protection Week.

The outcomes of these two events marked the turning point for PASGR’s approach to engaging, informing and influencing policy uptake with research evidence. It led us to think about dedicated platforms, spaces and/or vehicles through which researchers and policy actors could interact and engage each other to confront public policy problems.

In May 2015, PASGR received a seed grant from the Dutch Knowledge Platform on Inclusive Development (INCLUDE) to conceptualize and design an innovative approach for using research to inform policy. PASGR organised a Research-Policy Actors Forum in September 2015 that examined the challenges of research-to-policy uptake; assessed important knowledge needs of policy actors; explored the processes that researchers need to be aware of and appreciate if their research evidence is to get policy traction; and important stakeholders that need to be involved in attempts to build the policy-research communities. Based on the experiences shared, it became clear that the challenges of low uptake of policy research could be improved if researchers and policy actors worked together. The forum also understood that using research evidence to inform policy and programme uptake needs to recognise the interest and power of multiple actors, hence political negotiation and consensus-building would be key to the work of the community. In addition, the use of both traditional and new media would be needed to help set the agenda and effectively disseminate research evidence.

Our Eureka Moment – 2017 and beyond

Building on lessons from a series of internal and external engagements, PASGR finally got a handle on a unique Theory of Change in translating research into policy and enhancing evidence uptake – Utafiti Sera. The Swahili phrase for Research Policy was coined creating a platform for knowledge sharing and engagement on policy issues.