When an infectious disease outbreak emerges, decision-makers face an immediate challenge: how can informed choices be made in an environment where information is changing rapidly, evidence is incomplete, and the consequences of delay can be measured in lives lost?

Having access to timely, reliable and actionable evidence is therefore essential. Rapid evidence and discourse summaries play a critical role in helping governments, humanitarian agencies, public health responders and development partners navigate uncertainty and respond effectively to evolving outbreaks.

Though evidence alone is not enough. During emergencies, decision-makers are often overwhelmed by information arriving from multiple sources: research studies, surveillance reports, operational updates, media coverage, social media discussions and expert networks. The challenge is not simply finding information but identifying what is relevant, reliable and actionable. Here is where K4DD’s Evidence and Discourse Summaries come in.

Learning From Covid-19 Summaries

The value of rapid evidence synthesis was demonstrated during the Covid-19 pandemic through the Knowledge for Development (K4D) COVID-19 Health Evidence Summaries. Produced by Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) in partnership with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and other K4D consortium members, the summaries provided regular updates on emerging evidence and discourse relevant to policymakers and practitioners working in an unprecedented global crisis.

Rather than simply collecting research, the summaries synthesised emerging evidence, expert commentary, operational insights and policy discussions. This broader perspective helped decision-makers track developments during a rapidly evolving crisis and identify important uncertainties before the traditional publication.

“Evidence Summaries are brilliant because they… tell us what the key things are this week and we can interpret them in the context of FCDO.” – FCDO Advisor

Feedback from users captured in this impact story showed that the summaries provided value to government departments, informing policy and programming responses, and to the wider development, humanitarian, and public health communities by facilitating access to timely and relevant evidence during the pandemic. Although commissioned to meet specific evidence needs within the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), their public availability helped support evidence-informed decision-making beyond their original audience.

Supporting Ebola Response Through Timely Intelligence

The same principles apply to the recent 2026 Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. While scientific research remains essential, effective outbreak response depends on understanding much more than the epidemiology of a disease. Responders need evidence on diagnostics, therapeutics, surveillance, community engagement, risk communication and continuity of essential health services. They also need insight into the social, behavioural, political and security dynamics that influence transmission and shape the success of interventions.

By synthesising evidence and discourse across these areas of research, summaries such as the K4DD Ebola Evidence and Discourse Summaries provide a more complete picture of the outbreak environment and support more informed and coordinated decision-making.

These summaries should also be forward-looking rather than just retrospective. While lessons from previous outbreaks remain valuable, responders often need answers to more immediate questions: What is changing? What evidence is emerging? What risks should we be monitoring? What developments may affect operational decisions over the coming weeks? By focusing on emerging evidence and evolving discourse, K4DD’s summaries can help decision-makers anticipate challenges rather than simply reflect on them.

Navigating Uncertainty: The Balance Between Speed and Confidence

One of the greatest challenges during any outbreak is balancing the need for rapid action with the reality that evidence is often incomplete. Rapid evidence summaries help decision-makers understand what is known, what is emerging and what remains uncertain at a given point in time. Their role is not to provide definitive answers to every question but to offer the best available understanding of a rapidly evolving situation.

Early findings may come from field observations, operational intelligence, expert networks or preprint studies that have not yet undergone peer review. These sources can provide invaluable early warning signals and help identify emerging trends before they appear in the formal literature. However, they also require transparency about their limitations and the level of confidence that can be placed in them.

For this reason, evidence and discourse summaries should clearly identify the source and maturity of information, distinguishing between peer-reviewed research, preprints, operational reports and expert analysis. This allows readers to understand both the value and limitations of the evidence being presented.

Changing decisions when new evidence emerges should not be viewed as a weakness. In emergency response, adaptation is a strength. The willingness to revise guidance, adjust priorities and modify interventions as understanding improves is a hallmark of evidence-informed decision-making.

Creating a Public Good

Drawing on expertise from K4DD, LSTM, IDS, the Multi-Hazard Research Network, and wider partner organisations, these summaries can provide a trusted mechanism for sharing intelligence, research and operational insights across the response community.

Although developed to meet FCDO evidence needs, experience from Covid-19 shows that openly published summaries support governments, humanitarian organisations, researchers and policy advisers across the wider response community. Making rapid evidence and discourse summaries publicly available therefore serves both an operational and a public-good function. It strengthens transparency, supports collaboration, reduces duplication of effort and helps ensure that emerging knowledge reaches those who can use it most effectively.

In fast-moving emergencies such as the outbreak of Ebola, information can save lives but only if it reaches decision-makers in a form they can use. Rapid evidence and discourse summaries provide one way to bridge emerging knowledge and operational action, helping ensure that decisions are informed not only by what was known yesterday, but by what is being discovered today and what may shape the response tomorrow.

You can find all of K4DD’s Evidence and Discourse Summaries on Ebola, Humanitarianism, Health, Conflict and Agrifood, on the K4DD website.

Whenever there is a comparison of the technological capabilities of two major global economies, there is a temptation to simply declare a winner. The recent K4DD report ‘Comparison of the UK and India’s Research and Innovation Strengths’ resists that framing entirely.

More importantly, it demonstrates something strategic: India has built institutional capabilities in digital health, frugal innovation, and deployment infrastructure that the UK structurally lacks. The UK possesses depth-driven research excellence that India can complement with its downstream abilities.

Scale, Deployment, and India’s Ecosystem Capabilities

India’s Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) has enabled over 350 million telemedicine consultations, reaching more than one billion mobile users. What distinguishes ABDM is not just these scale metrics but institutional maturity. ABDM’s architecture comprises unified health identifiers (Ayushman Bharat Health Account – ABHA), interoperable digital health records (ABDM), and open-API infrastructure governed by the National Health Authority with defined privacy standards and cybersecurity protocols. This governance architecture – comparable to NHS standards but enabling deployment across 1.4 billion people with diverse healthcare infrastructure – is rare globally.

For UK health tech companies, this means accessing real-world testing grounds with governance rigour and population diversity that UK domestic markets cannot replicate. The National Health Authority has also embedded digital health workforce training at the district level, creating implementation infrastructure that ensures sustainable adoption, not just episodic deployment. ABDM’s open API enables third-party developers to build solutions once and deploy at scale through a single regulated platform – a capability the UK currently lacks domestically.

The UK-India health partnership in 2025 explicitly prioritises digital health innovation collaboration representing access for UK health tech companies to build and deploy at population scale across 1.4 billion people through a single regulated platform. Certified integration pathways enable rapid deployment while meeting mandatory compliance standards.

Maharashtra’s partnership with Google India to deploy AI-led healthcare solutions statewide, combined with innovations from companies like Sigtuple (digital pathology platforms) and Apollo Hospitals (AI-Precision Oncology Centre), demonstrates that India’s deployment capability extends beyond government initiatives to a growing private innovation ecosystem.

Frugal Innovation as Competitive Advantage

India’s approach to innovation under resource constraints has matured into a systematic methodology, not cost-cutting. Frugal innovation – solving complex problems with limited resources – includes mobile-based diagnostic systems designed for contexts with limited lab infrastructure; AI systems optimised for low-bandwidth, high-temperature environments; and microfinance-enabled health models reaching underserved populations. For UK companies entering emerging markets or scaling globally, this is valuable intellectual property and proven methodology. Solutions proven in rural India’s infrastructure constraints are highly transferable to other LMIC contexts, making them commercially valuable globally.

Talent Infrastructure and Strategic Government Commitment

India’s capabilities are backed by substantial government commitment. The Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme has allocated $10 billion to semiconductor manufacturing; the India Semiconductor Mission provides government-led support for moving upstream toward design and advanced materials research. This policy environment signals India’s intention to become a technology leader, not merely a manufacturing hub.

Complementing this, India’s talent infrastructure is substantial: 1.5 million engineering graduates annually; concentrated semiconductor design clusters in Bangalore, Pune, and Hyderabad; and a $15 billion+ healthcare IT sector producing digital health specialists. For the UK, this represents a talent resource addressing domestic labour constraints in chip design and digital health.

In telecom, India played a leading role in the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) formation of the Focus Group on AI-Native Telecom Networks, advocating for standards that embed AI directly into network architecture. The Bharat Gen AI project, launched in June 2025, built AI systems that are multilingual, inclusive, and grounded in Indian cultural contexts in an attempt to move towards digital sovereignty. With over one billion mobile users providing an unparalleled real-world testing ground, India’s approach to frugal innovation is increasingly seen as a model for emerging markets globally.

Why India, and Not Other LMIC Partners?

India’s position is further strengthened by multi-dimensional complementarity. China’s semiconductor manufacturing capacity exceeds India’s, but UK-China research partnerships face geopolitical constraints and export controls. Brazil excels in agricultural biotech but lacks an integrated healthcare digital infrastructure. Vietnam offers lower manufacturing costs but has minimal research capacity in semiconductors and no mature digital health governance.

India is strategically distinct because it simultaneously addresses UK gaps across multiple domains: semiconductor design talent (20% of global chip engineers), emerging manufacturing capacity ($10 billion PLI), mature healthcare digital infrastructure (ABDM), proven frugal innovation methodology, and democratic alignment. This multi-dimensional complementarity is rare and explains why India is the natural partner for UK technology ambitions.

Why This Partnership Matters: India’s Strengths Solving UK’s Gaps

The evidence is clear: the UK and India are structurally complementary, but this partnership succeeds because India has built independent strengths UK needs.

This is visible in semiconductors, where a UK-India partnership formalised through the Technology Security Initiative in June 2024 offers a blueprint: the UK contributes advanced materials research and design IP, while India provides manufacturing scale and engineering talent. However, Taiwan manufactures 90% of advanced semiconductor chips. A potential China-Taiwan conflict could create catastrophic vulnerability for UK technology security and prosperity. UK’s National Semiconductor Strategy focuses on design and IP leadership yet remains commercially locked-in to Taiwan/Korean fabrication. A UK-India partnership enables “strategic redundancy”: building complementary production nodes that reduce single-point failure risks while maintaining economic efficiency.

The Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 in the UK, combined with India’s agritech scale reaching millions of smallholders through an estimated £18 billion sector opportunity, is seen as an opportunity for innovations that are both scientifically advanced and globally accessible.

For UK taxpayers, this may lead to strategic value through access to deployment capability, population-scale testing grounds, and talent resources. A world where cutting-edge AI tools are designed in the UK’s university labs and deployed across Indian public health systems is a world that looks very different from one where those tools remain locked within high-income countries.

The report’s conclusion is clear: the convergence of “UK’s research excellence” with “India’s implementation capabilities and scaling opportunity” creates “opportunities for cutting-edge innovations that are both scientifically advanced and globally accessible”.

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This blog is based on an evidence synthesis piece, supported by Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), Government of UK. However, the views expressed herein are those of the author, and may not necessarily represent the official policies of the Government of UK or K4DD.

Civil society networks are vital to strengthening civil society organisations (CSOs), enhancing learning, advocacy, and accountability. But in an era of shrinking aid budgets and closing civic space, how external funders support these networks matters. K4DD research sets out what the evidence says about the most effective approaches.

External funders play a critical role in supporting civil society networks. However, there is limited literature on what external funders have learnt from their experiences so far on supporting such networks regarding effective modalities of support. The K4DD review ‘Effective Ways for External Funders to Support Civil Society Networks’ draws on evaluations of existing civil society grants and networks, alongside surveys and reports from CSOs themselves. An overarching message emerges: external funders need to provide more support that is informed by reflections on power, local knowledge, and cross-sectoral learning.

A sector under pressure

Civil society networks are under acute stress. The closure of USAID in 2025 and related budget cuts around the world have hit the sector hard: a recent EU Supporting Enabling Environment for Civil Society (EU SEE) survey found that 72% of respondent CSOs were directly affected, with 40% experiencing severe budget reductions. Many are cutting staff, scaling down programmes, or shutting altogether.

Alongside financial pressure, civic space is narrowing, seeing increased legal harassment, financial investigations and negative characterisation in domestic discourse. These trends compound an already fragile funding landscape. A survey by Forus International found that most networks depend on just one or two income sources, most rely on project funding rather than core funding, and membership fees. The consequences of a funding streaming ending can be severe: one regional African network saw its income fall by 60% when a five-year EU project ended; another East African network lost 75% of its income when its funding shifted from strategic to project grants. Membership fees, an important indicator of organisational sustainability contribute less than 5% of income in contexts with closing civic space, compared to around a third in more open environments.

Civil society networks face a myriad of challenges and are increasingly in need of financial and non-financial support which is not being met by external funders.

What kinds of support do funders provide?

Our K4DD review maps a range of funding modalities available to donors: core funding, flexible funding, project funding, rapid response funding, seed funding, pooled funding, intermediary-based funding, and bridge funding. Each has distinct trade-offs.

Core funding which supports organisations’ basic operational costs and flexible funding which gives them discretion over how resources are used, emerges as the most valued by networks. A 2023 Robert Carr Fund annual report found that 87% of its grantee networks relied on core funding to pay staff salaries and maintain basic operations. Crucially, core funding also allowed networks to respond to emergencies and developments.

Project funding, by contrast, can constrain networks by dictating their goals and limiting their ability to do long-term work. Pooled funding reduces administrative costs but risks producing lowest-common-denominator priorities and can reduce a network’s autonomy. Intermediary-based funding can help reach hard-to-access organisations but risks crowding out local actors and creating new power imbalances.

What does effective funder support look like?

Drawing on evaluations of programmes our K4DD review finds that while more funders should transparently share their evaluations of funding such programmes and learnings, it is possible to identify a set of emerging good practices.

On funding, the evidence points clearly towards moving away from short-term, competitive, results-driven project grants and towards long-term core funding that enables planning, adaptation and survival in crises. Funders should also coordinate with each other to harmonise reporting requirements and avoid duplicating work; the experience of CIVICUS shows that consolidated reporting across funders significantly reduces administrative burden. There is also a strong case for striking a balance between supporting established networks and investing in emerging ones, and for grounding funding decisions in local knowledge of needs and priorities. Lastly, it is also important for donors to have an exit strategy and allow for transitions.

On relationships and power, the review calls for a genuine shift in how funders relate to civil society. This means involving CSOs in co-creating funding programmes and not limiting their role to delivering them. Allowing networks to act as fund managers enables them to reach communities that donors cannot easily access directly. Shifting leadership from northern-based organisations to organisations based in lower- and middle-income countries. Recognising that change takes time, it is important for funders to extend project durations to at least five years to allow for the relationship-building and political processes that produce meaningful change.

Rethinking the funder-network relationship

Perhaps the most consistent message across our K4DD review’s evidence base is the need for a more balanced relationship between funders and civil society networks, a relationship built on genuine dialogue, mutual accountability, and respect for networks’ autonomy and local expertise.

This means funders investing in research on civil society needs from Global South perspectives and sharing that knowledge across the donor community, developing forward-looking practices that actively protect civic space, and treating civil society networks not as delivery vehicles for donor priorities but as actors with their own strategies, mandates, and legitimacy.

The sector is under extraordinary pressure from budget cuts, shrinking civic space, and shrinking international aid. The evidence is clear on the kinds of financial and non-financial approaches to support civil society networks. It shows that funders are urged to meet the growing unmet needs of civil society networks by learning from each other, encouraging learning between networks, building more genuine and equal relationships between funders and networks, providing long-term core and flexible funding, opening civic space, and prioritising global south leadership and local knowledge.

Knowledge services designed to position evidence for use on development assistance are adjusting to keep up with a rapidly changing policy agenda. In this blog, I share how the Knowledge for Development and Diplomacy Programme (K4DD) is managing this transformation in the demand for evidence.

Seismic realignment of areas of interest

For decades, K4DD partners have been providing rapid evidence synthesis services to the UK government and beyond. We are currently experiencing, along with many other providers of similar services, an unprecedented shift in demand. These changes are taking effect across OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) as Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) budgets shrink and new geopolitical priorities emerge. Demand driven evidence services have always experienced the ebb and flow of topics and geographies as policy agendas fluctuate and crisis occur. However, never before have we experienced such a seismic realignment of areas of interest in the social sciences for development.

K4DD, led by the Institute of Development Studies, produces over 200 rapid evidence reviews a year for the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO) civil servants and government officials. Although K4DD had already extended its services to cover both development and diplomacy, to reflect FCDO’s mandate, the current shift in demand goes far beyond this.

1 in 3 evidence requests non-ODA compliant

Almost one in three requests for these rapid evidence reviews from FCDO staff no longer qualify for ODA funding. They relate to a diverse mix of research questions on international security, science diplomacy and science and technology. Meanwhile, the focus of many of the more conventional international development inquiries, focused on low-income countries, is shifting away from DAC priorities, like sustainable development, the advancement of equalities among countries and poverty eradication. We are receiving an increasing number of requests on industrial strategy, growth, trade and migration, not all of which, depending on their focus, meet ODA requirements

These new and fast emerging policy priorities require deep thinking on how to best meet the needs of evidence users in policy and practice. For example, in areas like science diplomacy, research questions may emerge for which there is relatively little published academic literature. Therefore, evidence review methodologies have to be flexible and responsive to these needs. This is closely related to the long-standing debate around the trade-offs between the usefulness of evidence for policy and conventional standards in academic rigour.

For demand driven and policy focused evidence services, conventional literature searches do not always provide adequate relevant data and the urgency of the queries may require alternative methods. These might include drawing upon individuals’ expert knowledge and drawing upon non-traditional sources such as mainstream and social media.

New agendas require new types of evidence

Shifting evidence demand into new domains requires meaningful engagement with our clients to understand what they think constitutes relevant and useful evidence and why. Whilst it is important to challenge them to take a critical approach, we must also be open to having our own preconceptions challenged of what research rigour looks like under these circumstances. One must consider the usefulness of a range of data sources and expert knowledge, such as media reports and input from industry experts. These sources may include insights not yet captured by research outputs in the academic and grey literature.

The reality is that scientific research can be epistemically robust without offering any solutions to policy challenges, whereas for policy makers, rigour and effectiveness means evidence that produces ideas that can shape policy and programmes in real time. Simply stating what the gaps in evidence are, or suggesting that one waits for a stronger evidence base to emerge, is not always adequate. The Covid-19 pandemic reminded us that sometimes evidence just has to be good enough.

Asking the right questions

Another challenge one encounters during a period of transformation of policy agendas and uncertainty is the framing of questions posed by policy makers. During periods of great upheaval and the emergence of novel policy dilemmas, an important strategy is to work with our partners in policy to refine their research questions. If initial searches suggest there is little literature on a topic, or that it is too narrowly or too broadly articulated, then we can work with them to co-produce a better question that addresses the core problem within the limitations of the available data. This process may also reveal any presuppositions that are shaping the initial inquiry. As policy agendas have shifted, this ideation stage of evidence synthesis, has become increasingly important.

You may also find yourself working with clients who are relatively new to research synthesis services, having formerly relied mostly on expert advice and experiential knowledge. These collaborations will grow evidence users’ understanding of the benefits of rapid evidence synthesis. They will also support researchers’ appreciation of their clients’ motivations and needs. In K4DD we have found this pays great dividends in promoting a culture of evidence informed policy and practice.

Demand driven services can help shape research agendas

This pragmatic approach to delivering useful knowledge services to support evidence use during periods of shifting policy and programmatic priorities must run in parallel to the deliberate efforts to shape these agendas. Working in close partnership with government agencies on the provision of embedded knowledge services offers unique opportunities to influence evidence demand. As OECD DAC members align themselves around agendas focused on security, AI technologies, global health, immigration, humanitarian crisis and climate change, we can help to ensure the lived experiences of marginalised communities are considered.

As global policy agendas continue to rapidly evolve, knowledge services designed to supply the best possible evidence to inform decisions will play a crucial role in ensuring policy institutions are asking the right questions.

The world is experiencing more conflict now than since 1946. State fragility, peace and security are increasingly at the forefront of development policy, which is seeing an overall trend towards ‘securitisation’. While limited funding for climate change adaptation is well-documented, can the framing of climate change as a ‘security’ issue unlock new avenues of financial potential, or will the actors driving action create more problems by overlooking issues of power?

When service provision and institutional capacity are low, climate change can impact state fragility, although there is no consensus on what exactly state fragility means. Our K4DD reports ‘Climate, Peace and Security: Cascading Risks and Conflict Prevention Tools’ explore how state fragility is defined and addressed, while ‘Approaches to State Fragility and Climate Security’ explores the links between climate, peace and security, including issues of cascading climate risk. This has also been explored through the lens of Climate Related Fiscal Risk, including how to respond to issues relating to the stranding of assets and public financial liabilities associated with ever-increasing climate change risks.

Fragile states, powerful actors

The attribution of causality between climate change, fragility and conflict remains highly contested, yet the term ‘fragility’ has become increasingly common in development policy, especially since the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

There are numerous indices that seek to quantify and rank countries’ fragility. These are commonly based on indicators of state monopoly on violence, legitimacy, and capacity to provide basic public services, though weightings and individual indicators vary (for example, the biannual Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Transformation Index (BTI), the Constellations of State Fragility, and the Fragile States Index).

Security discourses are critiqued for their role in legitimising the role of military actors and agendas in climate adaptation. With these power dynamics in mind, systems analysis is seen to be a useful tool for planning, programming and policy response, enabling the recognition of diffuse relationships between variables, and the interconnectedness of distributed social, ecological, political, historical and economic factors which can contribute to conflict.

Causal attribution of climate change and conflict

There is no consensus over the influence of climate change on state fragility, with divisions in the literature over the causal attribution of climate change and conflict, which entails a number of assumptions about the nature of conflict and natural resource (mis)management. Evidence shows three prevailing approaches typify understandings of the relationship between climate-related conflict, peace and security issues:

1. Claiming causal linkages between environmental change, resource scarcity, and violent conflict, usually based on assumptions about population growth;
2. Emphasising indirect linkages between climate change and conflict, and the role of local institutions and behaviours; and
3. Highlighting the complexity and politics of how climate change and conflict are presented.

Cascading climate risk

There is a significant amount of research that emphasises the links between local climate, peace, security, and international geopolitics, which intersect with notions of cascading climate risk. However, there is far stronger evidence to suggest that resource abundance has a greater influence on conflict risk. For example, the race to extract and utilise newly accessible resources, including rare earth minerals, oil and gas in the Arctic as sea ice recedes and shipping routes open up. In addition to this resource (abundance) conflict and the localised socioecological impacts, the damage to the Arctic environment is expected to have widespread, transboundary cascading climate impacts. However, where these may be felt in the longer term, and where the Arctic is subject to geopolitical dispute, these risks are not currently prioritised in policy governing “green” energy transitions, which often include a reliance on rare earth minerals, though they inform significant future security threats.

Cascading climate risks are commonly understood through direct and indirect transboundary impacts on coupled systems, for example, trade and supply chains. This informs direct structural risk cascades such as infrastructural disruption and asset stranding, and indirect social risk cascades resulting from human behavioural responses to shocks, capacity to adapt and respond to (both of the public and the state), public service provision, and resultant policy (in)coherence and integration of risk responses.

Policy incoherence

Policy incoherence is highlighted in the evidence as a key challenge for bringing together climate and conflict prevention tools. There is a need to pay attention to both the short- and long-term impacts of policy and programming to meet integrated objectives, responding to both immediate needs (through peacebuilding and humanitarian interventions) and longer-term adaptive capacity (addressing climate-resilience and strengthening local institutional responses).

Prominent critics have also cautioned against common perceptions of the environment as a neutral entry point for peacebuilding. In fragile and conflict-affected settings, where the social contract of the state and the provision of key services are already fractured, consistent attention to power relations and the structural inequalities that continue to inform and shape experiences of vulnerability is necessary.

While there is no consensus on the definition of state fragility, cascading climate risks are likely to increase multifaceted vulnerabilities in conflict-affected states and beyond. Climate risk cascades won’t stop at country borders, necessitating a longer view for the policy-making governing “green” transitions. Policies that are not grounded in evidence risk contributing to future climate risk cascades.

Humanitarianism is a broad field that has developed considerably since the 1990s. Accompanying this growth has been a proliferation of researchers seeking to understand and improve humanitarian practices.

The K4DD Humanitarian Evidence and Discourse Summary is a monthly evidence digest sharing the latest humanitarian outputs. They’ve been running since 2020 and feature emerging research and opinion as it is published. They are designed to bring the latest resources directly to humanitarian workers, particularly in these turbulent times. Here’s why evidence summaries like these are needed.

Why is humanitarian evidence needed more than ever?

Even before the recent cuts in government aid, humanitarian actors confronted immense problems. Protracted crises, violent armed actors operating with impunity, a growing number of natural disasters stemming from climate change, violence against refugees and the development of new weapons, are some of the challenges facing the humanitarian sector and beyond.

For several decades, the humanitarian sector has sought to ‘professionalise’ itself. The creation of standards, platforms for sharing best practice, coordination mechanisms, and a culture of research and evidence use, have all contributed to this effort. The sector has also expanded to include new topics and domains of action.

Humanitarian thinking is thriving in many forms. Universities (including the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute at the University of Manchester), humanitarian think tanks and organisations, as well as the United Nations (UN), produce regular evidence and discussion. The outputs are rich and varied, covering a range of intersecting and pressing topics which include health, shelter and water, humanitarian diplomacy, civilian protection, anticipatory action, systemic reform and new ways of working.

Seeking to help improve a sector that works in complex, dangerous and uncertain situations, this evidence has contributed to the analysis and improvement of numerous activities, the discovery of new problems, and different ways of thinking about aid.

Keeping up with evidence

The expansion of evidence is certainly a good thing, but the sheer volume of new blogs, papers, databases and more can be hard to keep up with! Especially in such turbulent times.

K4DD’s Humanitarian Evidence and Discourse Summaries are not a review of the evidence on a particular problem, as with K4DD’s Rapid Evidence Reviews that focus on answering a specific thematic question. Instead, the Summaries collate the recent evidence on humanitarianism more broadly, using FCDO’s themes of ‘protect, prioritise and prevent’. Each month, we search for newly published evidence that fits into these broad categories. We then ask a guest editor, either a humanitarian practitioner or researcher, to choose five ‘top reads’ from the list, to highlight evidence they find particularly interesting, or draw out emerging topics and themes in the discourse.

Although we split the publications into evidence, discourse and guidelines, there is no simple way to divide the publications we spotlight, as they are varied in topic and methodology. Publications that are more systematic and based on empirical studies tend to be categorised as evidence. Resources that provide commentary or insights on humanitarian problems are designated as discourse. And publications that disseminate best practices for a particular sub-field of humanitarianism tend to be classified as guidelines.

We hope that people working in the humanitarian sector find the Humanitarian Evidence and Discourse Summaries useful, to:

• bring together a large body of publications in place for easy finding
• assist with the cross-fertilisation of ideas and approaches across ‘siloes’
• introduce readers to a range of topics, disciplines and perspectives
• prompt readers to take a broader view and engage with critical perspectives that they might not otherwise have come across.

It is important to integrate longer and more tailored forms of learning. To this end, K4DD also published a humanitarian resource guide and resource pack signposting a number of online courses and resources for humanitarian practitioners.

Humanitarian aid seeks to address difficult, intractable problems, without straightforward solutions. Nevertheless, the sector has seen progress in understanding on many fronts: from refining famine early warning, to growing evidence on the effectiveness and effects of cash aid, to the importance of intersectional analysis of needs and vulnerability to crisis, the sector has learnt. It is therefore hugely important to be able to collate and disseminate this information. In turbulent times it is more important than ever that actions are supported by considered, evidence-based thinking.

You can find the latest edition of our Humanitarian Evidence and Discourse Summary here.

Increasing the supply of affordable housing in Nigeria is a government priority. Affordable housing refers to housing that can be owned by income groups categorised as below middle income. There are many barriers to the provision of affordable housing and over the years, Nigeria’s housing policy has evolved through numerous iterations to address the demand for affordable housing. Priorities for providing affordable housing and obstacles to addressing gaps in the housing market are examined in our report Priorities for Affordable Housing in Nigeria.

Nigeria’s demand for affordable housing

The demand for affordable housing has been increasing as the government’s public housing programme has been failing to reach its targets. From 2020 to 2023 the goal was to build 20,000 housing units annually. However, only 24% of this target was achieved. With the combined efforts of the public and private sector, only around 70,000 housing units are built annually. This is far short of the target of 700,000 that need to be built to address the housing gap. Deficiencies in housing supply have led to the mushrooming of informal settlements and slum areas, with over 49% of the country’s population living informally.

Barriers to affordable housing and delivery

There are a number of factors that affect the construction of affordable housing. These include: the high cost of building materials; the high costs of accessing land as well as the preparation of sites and services; the shortage of mortgage options in the market for low-income earners as well as revenue and budget limitations that have hindered the completion of projects. Other barriers include: a technical skills shortage in the construction sector (including a lack of skills and training in the use of sustainable low-cost housing technologies) the capacity of government to monitor the implementation of housing programmes; political risk resulting from a lack of continuity between government policies following changes to administrations after elections; complicated local government regulations and cumbersome bureaucratic processes; onerous land registration processes; security of tenure and poor enforcement of property rights.

Government measures to deal with the gap in affordable housing

Various measures are being implemented to address barriers to affordable housing. These include: the establishment of a National Housing Data Centre by the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (FMHUD); reforms to land registration processes in some states; the establishing of building manufacturing hubs as focal points for skills development in conjunction with the private sector ; specific measures to promote affordable housing such as reforming the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) and the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) so that they are in alignment with an overarching housing agenda, Renewed Hope Agenda which is a blueprint for affordable housing; expanding the Urban Renewal and Slum Upgrading Programme and; streamlining administrative processes to reduce housing costs.

Additional measures recommended by experts

Besides the measures already being implemented, some additional key policies are advocated by experts to increase the affordable housing:

• Public-private partnerships where the private sector collaborates with government to develop housing schemes, to reduce costs and implement new innovations
• Site and service schemes where homeowners actively participate in the construction of their own houses at an affordable cost
• Cooperative housing schemes that entail the combining of resources into cooperatives to develop housing for members.
• Reviewing the Land Act to increase security of tenure for private property developers
• Making housing more affordable to lower income earners through reducing interest rates and creating a secondary mortgage market with loner-term repayment conditions
• The creation of a national credit database to reduce the time taken to evaluate home loan applications
• Government funded infrastructural development through the provision of basic services, water reticulation and roads
• Enforcement of town planning regulations to ensure existing housing infrastructure does not deteriorate and good quality housing is developed
• Addressing corruption in property development. This includes approval processes for property development; inflated contracts and the appointment of incompetent contractors overlooking capable ones

Use of new technologies to promote affordability and sustainable housing

The use of new technologies to reduce costs and promote sustainability are being considered and in some cases applied in housing schemes. These include:

• The use of Dry Construction techniques using recast panels. This encourages energy efficiency and provides thermal insulation
• Interlocking stabilised bricks from local materials. The use of local materials and cement-stabilised bricks is already being applied and has resulted in large cost savings
• Light Gauge Steel (LGS) entails the use of cold-formed steel frames for low-rise buildings. This reduces the need for timber, concrete and masonry and minimizes waste and emissions
• Fibre Cement Technology (FCT) is reinforced fibre cement boards for roofing and walls. This technology is resistant to fires and termites as well as rot. It also limits the use of asbestos which is a health risk
• Compressed Earth Blocks (CEB) entails the use of compact blocks from stabilised earth. This approach uses less lime and cement and is cheaper and more energy efficient than conventional blocks

Action towards affordable housing

It is clear that some steps have been taken to address the critical housing backlog of affordable housing in Nigeria. However, these measures are not sufficient on their own to reduce the housing gap. Good policies need sustained implementation between elected governments.

A holistic approach is required to address all the obstacles to affordable housing. This includes regulatory reforms; an inclusive approach such as ongoing work with the private sector to increase housing delivery and improve mortgage options that target lower income households; sustained urban renewal programmes, development of site and service schemes and the adoption of lower cost, sustainable new housing construction technologies.

Pakistan is urbanising at an increasingly rapid rate – as of 2023, almost 40% of the population lived in urban areas. This poses major challenges, in relation to such things as housing, essential services, pollution, and security. However, it also presents major opportunities for economic growth and poverty reduction.

The goal for Pakistan is to find ways to minimise the negative impact and maximise the positive effects of urbanisation. The evidence of these potentials is explored in our report ‘Urbanisation Trends in Pakistan and Impact on Development Progress’. Here’s what we found.

Pakistan’s urbanisation: scale and drivers

Pakistan’s census in 2023 found that the total population was 241.9 million, of whom nearly 40% were in urban areas. While this proportion is comparable to other South Asian countries, the rate of urban growth in Pakistan is the fastest in the region. Between 2017 and 2023, the overall population grew by 2.55%, but the urban population by 3.57%. There are now 22 Pakistani cities with a population of 500,000 or more, up from 14 in 2017. Of the four provinces, Punjab has the highest number of urban residents.  

Why is Pakistan urbanising so quickly? Historically, conflict has been a main driver of urbanisation in the country. This started with Partition and independence in 1947, when millions of Indian Muslims were displaced across the new border into its cities. Similarly, the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and later counter-terrorism operations in the tribal belt, have pushed many people to cities, notably to Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi.

More recently, climate change effects are pushing people to urban areas: drought, large-scale floods (such as the devastating floods of 2022), and extreme weather events are all eroding rural livelihood sources. Rural residents also move in search of a better quality of life, and there is natural population growth.

Negative effects: cities under stress

Pakistan’s cities were not prepared for the historic influxes or for more recent arrivals. The country’s rapid urbanisation has thus had knock-on negative effects on development. The evidence used in our report shows that the ability of cities and urban areas to deliver essential services such as water and sanitation, healthcare and education – already difficult – comes under increasing strain. The housing deficit has created vast urban slums, while jobs are often insufficient or low-income. Pakistan’s cities do contribute significantly to the economy, but urban inequality means there are high levels of urban poverty. Urbanisation also exacerbates problems with congestion and pollution. And there are security implications, with increased risk of political violence and radicalisation or extremist violence.

Positive potential of urbanisation

International experience shows that urbanisation is associated with high growth, with a number of factors involved. Firstly, people in urban areas have better access to healthcare, education, as well as access to transport, the internet and electricity. All these factors contribute to higher productivity and poverty reduction.

Secondly, urbanisation provides opportunities for agglomeration (geographic concentration of economic activity), which contributes to specialisation, knowledge exchange, economies of scale and entrepreneurship. The city of Sialkot, for example, is renowned for the production of sporting goods and surgical equipment. Productive urban areas have positive spillover effects on rural areas, such as through remittances.

Thirdly, Pakistan has a very young population, so its urban areas have the additional potential to realise a ‘demographic dividend’ (possible when a country has a high proportion of people of working age, and a small share of dependents, such as the elderly). However, this requires investment in education, skills and job creation.

Government commitments and approaches

The Government of Pakistan’s Vision 2025 aims to transform ‘urban areas into creative, eco-friendly sustainable cities’ and to make urbanisation an important driver of growth. Specific measures to bring this about include: revision of zoning laws; development of the housing sector (especially low-cost housing); expansion of public services; development of mass transit systems; and promotion of ‘smart’ cities through the use of data and technology. In addition, empowering municipal governments to raise more of their own revenue, and building their capacity for urban planning and management, can make a significant difference. The private sector also has to play a role: there is huge potential for public-private partnerships, such as in housing, services and transport.  

Donor interventions

Various donors are supporting sustainable urbanisation in Pakistan. The Asian Development Bank, for example, is funding two major cities’ improvement programmes in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa respectively. Both focus on intermediate cities, and seek to build capacity as well as improve water supply, sanitation, solid waste management and transport infrastructure.

There is considerable scope for such donors to help Pakistan realise the positive potential of urban areas, through support for service delivery, capacity building of municipal governments and the private sector.

Looking ahead

What else can be done to realise the potential of Pakistan’s urbanisation? Our report gives some options based on the available literature. One innovative measure would be establishing sister-city partnerships between cities in Pakistan and Europe, in particular those with high Pakistani diaspora populations. Such partnerships would allow the exchange of knowledge, experience and lessons in urban governance, as well as contribute to job creation.

A second finding is that Pakistan could also benefit from best practices in other cities facing similar challenges. The Ahmedabad Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) in India, and the transformation of Medellín in Colombia are two such examples of positive change.

The UK Government set out in January 2025 a ‘blueprint to turbocharge’ AI use. But the principles that guide international and state actors’ use of artificial intelligence (AI) have – and continue to be – at the centre of global conversations. International organisations and governments around the world have been working on non-binding and binding principles for multi-lateral AI governance.

Here is what we found in our K4DD report on ‘Multilateral Technology Governance’.

The landscape of AI governance

The types of mechanisms governing AI fall broadly into two categories: binding and non-binding. Non-binding governance has an important role in the multilateral regulation of technologies, in part because it is quicker to adopt than binding regulations. Non-binding mechanisms carry no built-in cost for non-compliance. This makes it easier to attract more participants and also makes non-binding regulations more adaptable to the increasingly fast-paced changes in technology.

The landscape is very rich, and centres primarily around a variety of international organisations, including the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), among others. Of these, UNESCO is unquestionably the most influential actor both by virtue of the widespread adoption of its recommendations with 193 signatories, and the fact that it is highly involved in cooperation with other governance organisations.

The OECD’s governance efforts are also influential, although the OECD’s 38 Member States are comprised solely of high-income countries and do not provide a forum for negotiation with low and middle-income countries. Nevertheless, the OECD’s definition of AI has been widely adopted by all 36 Member States and eight non-member states.

The OECD AI Principles put forward five values-based recommendations for signatories, setting standards for AI that the OECD notes are ‘practical and flexible enough to stand the test of time’. These are:

1. Inclusive growth, sustainable development and well-being,
2. Human rights and democratic values, including fairness and privacy,
3. Transparency and explainability,
4. Robustness, security and safety, and
5. Accountability.

The G7 also recently focused a significant portion of its policy guidance on AI. This includes the May 2023 Hiroshima Process on Generative Artificial Intelligence, which was followed in May 2024 by the Hiroshima AI Process Friends Group at the OECD.

Inter-Agency Working Group on Artificial Intelligence

Together with UNESCO, the ITU hosts the Inter-Agency Working Group on Artificial Intelligence (IAWG-AI), which brings together expertise within the United Nations system on AI ethics and the ‘strategic approach and roadmap for supporting capacity development’. The group is open to all interested UN members and observers of UN High-level Committees and requires interested entities to designate a senior-level focal point from the organization to contribute to the Group’s work.

Notably, the group is largely responsible for the production of the UN System White Paper on AI Governance. At least within the UN system, the Working Group may serve as an influential actor in shaping UN programming and outreach on AI in the future.

UNESCO’s recommendations

UNESCO’s recommendations on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence were introduced in 2021 and are the most widely adopted globally, and are applicable to all 194 of UNESCO’s Member States. The recommendations adopt a broad understanding of AI, defining it as ‘systems with the ability to process data in a way which resembles intelligent behaviour’. The recommendations adopt four key values for the effective governance of AI systems:

1. Human rights and human dignity;
2. Living in peaceful, just, and interconnected societies;
3. Ensuring diversity and inclusiveness; and
4. Environment and ecosystem flourishing.

The recommendations are wide-ranging, covering issues from surveillance, oversight, data protection, and the environment, and highlight a need for governments and the private sector to build AI systems that protect and promote human rights and fundamental freedoms. Although UNESCO’s recommendations are non-binding in nature, their widespread adoption makes them among both the most inclusive and theoretically effective of the AI governance mechanisms surveyed here.

As part of its work on AI, UNESCO also undertakes State ‘readiness assessments’ as regards AI. These assessments – the most recent of which was Mexico – are undertaken in cooperation with the State in question, and UNESCO’s reports are the product of collaboration with national bodies related to technology and AI governance. In addition to its recommendations and its partnership with the ITU hosting the IAWG-AI, UNESCO hosts the Global AI Ethics and Governance Observatory, which aims to provide policy guidance on AI through research, best practices, and toolkits. Importantly, it includes questions of ethics, governance, innovation and standards, and even neurotechnology in this work.

The role of standard-setting organisations

Standards-setting plays an important role in the international governance of any technology, including AI. Like non-binding international agreements, standards constitute a voluntary mechanism. The two most important standards-setting bodies as regards AI are the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Both are non-governmental organizations, with membership comprised of national standards-setting institutions. The non-governmental status of both institutions means they rely on direct financial contributions from buy-in as opposed to public financial support.

Both the ISO and ICE jointly co-host the Committee on Artificial Intelligence – SC 42 – which plays a role in shaping standardisation in AI. Founded in 2017, SC 42 is a consensus-based body with 60 countries currently represented in the body. SC 42 operates under a one-country, one-vote policy and has five working groups: Foundational standards, Big Data, Trustworthiness, Use cases and applications, and computational approaches and characteristics of artificial intelligence.

The importance of non-binding mechanisms

As AI continues to evolve, bodies leveraging non-binding influence—such as the OECD, UNESCO, and standards-setting bodies—will be well positioned to continue to address the challenges and opportunities that continue to arise as AI technologies continue to evolve and proliferate. Non-binding mechanisms are also more likely to bring more actors than just the State to the table—allowing civil society and business alike to play a greater role in the governance process.

Mechanisms such as the EU’s AI Act will do the same, although the binding nature of such regulation means it will take longer to negotiate and be slower to adapt. The adaptability of non-binding mechanisms seems to make them the favoured international governance mechanism for AI, at least for the moment.

Humanitarian action is essential to support people facing crisis, save lives, assist their recovery, maintain their dignity, and increase their resilience. Developing our humanitarian knowledge, skills, and abilities is crucial if we are to prevent and respond to the multiple and protracted crises across the world.

These are challenging times, and in order to help humanitarians access the latest and most relevant resources to develop their learning, K4DD has published its ‘Humanitarian Learning Resource Guide – 3^rd Edition’. This blog shares just some of the reasons why updating our humanitarian knowledge is so important right now.   

Increasing humanitarian need

The Global Humanitarian Overview for 2025 noted that 305 million people require urgent humanitarian assistance and protection in 2025. This increasing humanitarian need is driven by conflict, disasters made more severe and frequent by climate change, and governance failures. This is coming at a time when the humanitarian system is facing many challenges, including decreasing funding at a time of increasing need, attacks on humanitarians and the services they provide, and access barriers for humanitarians and people in need.

Humanitarians and staff working on these issues need to constantly update their skills and capabilities. By doing so, their programming and policy efforts can be as effective as possible in the evolving global and local context, and to meet the increasing humanitarian need.

K4DD Humanitarian Learning Resource Guide

This update of the K4DD’s Humanitarian Learning Resource Guide is designed to provide information about free online courses and materials that the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) staff and other interested parties can use to develop or refresh their humanitarian knowledge, skills, and abilities. It is organised around the FCDO humanitarian technical competencies of:  

• Prioritise effective humanitarian assistance to people in greatest need
• Reform humanitarian theory, architecture and system effectiveness
• Protect civilians, IDPs, refugees, marginalised groups including women and girls and promote and maintain humanitarian access to these groups
• Prevent andanticipate future shocks and rebuild resilience in protracted and recurring crises

The guide provides an overview of the courses or resources and how much input is needed to engage with it so that people can chose to focus on the areas where they feel they want to develop or refresh their humanitarian competencies. The courses and resources are drawn from a range of different organisations working in the humanitarian sector.

Chris Porter, FCDO humanitarian Head of Profession said:

“Hugely grateful for this update. Whilst commissioned rather narrowly to support FCDO staff, feedback is that many others beyond FCDO found earlier editions helpful. There are some fantastic resources produced by a huge range of actors and great to bring a spotlight to just some of them – whilst recognising this is not a checklist!”

K4DD’s humanitarian resources

K4DD has produced a number of resources to support the uptake and understanding of the broad field of humanitarian evidence and knowledge. Aside from the Resource Guide, we have also published an associated 2^nd edition of our ‘Reading Pack: Humanitarian Action’, supported by a detailed video overview of the issues and challenges of humanitarian action by Jamie McGoldrick, former Humanitarian Coordinator at the United Nations.

K4DD also publishes monthly ‘Humanitarian Evidence and Discourse Summaries’. Authored by Luke Kelly at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI), these summaries signpost practitioners and policy makers, and anyone with an interest in humanitarian issues, to the latest relevant resources to inform and support your response to crises. You can get the latest summaries by subscribing to our dedicated LinkedIn newsletter.

Evidence suggests that the world is becoming increasingly volatile in the face of complex and interconnected challenges. It is also clear that we are failing to achieve key climate and development goals. More optimistically, other signals suggest that collective action still has the power to shape a more resilient and inclusive future.

Towards the end of last year, I reviewed some of these forecasts in global politics and sustainable development, exploring the outlook for international development from 2025 to 2035. Here’s what I found in the report, ‘Global Trends and Scenarios to 2035’.

What forecasts say about the short-term

Analysts expect the global economy to hold steady in 2025 although various near-term risks make the outlook uncertain. These include persistently high interest rates, the re-alignment of trading relationships around national security priorities, and the prospect of significant swings in trade and economic policy under the new US administration.

Over the past few years, there has been a ‘historic reversal in development’ according to a report by the World Bank, which finds that income inequality between the 75 poorest economies and the rest of the world is widening. Progress to reduce extreme poverty has stalled. Meanwhile, the Sustainable Development Goals move ever further out of reach.

What we should be looking out for up to 2035

Three important trends dominate development forecasts for the upcoming decade:

• Demographic transition. Some societies, for example in Europe and parts of East Asia, are ageing and their labour forces shrinking. Others, particularly in Africa and South Asia, have a younger and growing demographic that will expand the numbers of both workers and consumers. Both scenarios create challenges for societies and political systems in managing the economic and social consequences of demographic change.
• Changes to earth systems. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution constitute a ‘triple planetary crisis’ that may drive an additional 132 million people into extreme poverty by 2030. If current levels of consumption persist, the remaining ‘carbon budget’ to keep global warming below 1.5°C will be depleted by 2030. Even under the most optimistic scenarios, global temperatures will not fall for the next two generations.
• Technological disruption. New technologies, in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, climate science, and disease management, present both opportunities and risks and for that reason are being drawn into geopolitics. Private control over critical technologies and infrastructure is creating new dependencies and regulatory challenges amid concerns about the integrity of social media platforms and digital systems.

The trajectories of these trends over the coming decade are largely clear: global temperature increase and population growth are baked in to forecasts for the years ahead. What is less certain is how the world will respond, as these shifts emerge particularly at a time when multilateralism is weakening.

Countries are turning their attention inwards, alliances are in flux, and competition is replacing cooperation. Trust and consensus are further undermined by misinformation and disinformation – identified as the most severe short-term risk by the Global Risks Report for 2024. Global power is shifting from West to East and from advanced to emerging economies, although the pace and shape of this realignment is unclear.

What forecasts say about future scenarios

Young professionals participating in the Global Governance Futures – Robert Bosch Foundation Multilateral Dialogues (GGF) Programme developed a range of divergent scenarios for the world in 2035. Their work on global inequality offered two extremes, one of which illustrates the potential for both renewal and remobilisation after crisis.

The first scenario is a world of vast inequality in income and access to public goods, the collapse of institutions for multinational cooperation, and the widespread use of algorithms that reinforce gender and racial biases.

The second is a world saved in part by the actions of a younger generation of voters and leaders, spurred on by societal change, a financial scandal, and the ecological crisis to demand more sustainable global governance.

’The future is not fixed’

Renewal and decline can co-exist, and many forecasting studies capture this duality. Those that explore the prospects for democracy, for example, highlight not just the continuing spread of anti-democratic attitudes and the contraction of tolerant civic space, but also the vibrancy of civil society action, particularly by the young, alongside experimentation with new forms of citizen engagement such as deliberative democracy. As the GGF scenarios demonstrate, and as the Global Risks Report for 2024 concludes, ‘the future is not fixed’.

Exploring research ideas, problems and needs collaboratively is a valuable part of synthesising evidence, and also an opportunity to draw on the expertise of others.

This is a unique feature of the Knowledge for Development and Diplomacy (K4DD) programme, which provides the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) with a high-quality and rapid evidence and learning service. It provides FCDO staff with the opportunity to explore their needs with researchers and take advantage of a research helpdesk for rapid evidence reviews, larger (more detailed) reports, and a bespoke learning service.

In this blog, William Avis and Phoebe Hill share their experiences of engaging through K4DD, and how the programme is supporting the day-to-day work in FCDO.

How collaboration with K4DD supports FCDO staff

Phoebe Hill works in the Scholarships, Tertiary Education and Partnerships (STEP) Department of FCDO. She has been working with K4DD since late 2023 on three linked requests. Her latest request was for a rapid evidence review of the role women’s participation in higher education and technical and vocational education and training (TVET) plays in the economic and social development of lower- and middle-income countries.

The STEP Department was looking for the most up-to-date evidence, and their staff were keen to draw on available, free-to-use resources, to support our work.

“K4DD represented an exciting opportunity to engage with researchers based in a leading academic institution (in this instance the University of Birmingham) with extensive experience of supporting FCDO through the provision of rapid evidence reviews.

The partnership with William provided an opportunity to outline our research needs and how these feed into our programming. It also provided an opportunity to develop a clear and appropriate research question, defining the scope of evidence required, and clarifying expectations.

The discussion allowed us to test our internal thinking and assumptions with a representative of academia in a safe and constructive environment. It also allowed us to define the scope of the work to be undertaken in a manner that was useful to our day-to-day work”.

This discussion led to the submission of three queries on the following issues:

• Women’s Participation Rates in Higher Education (HE) and TVET: Collating data on women’s participation rates in HE and TVET, alongside indicators of socio-economic development.
• Women’s Participation in TVET and Socio-Economic Development: Providing a synthesis of existing literature on vocational training programmes in the global south and evidence of variation of impacts.
• Women’s Participation in HE and Socio-Economic Development: Providing a synthesis of existing literature on vocational training programmes in the global south and evidence of variation of impacts.

As well as being uploaded to K4DD’s OpenDocs repository for public access, the reports have also been uploaded to FCDO’s internal Centre of Expertise for Education so that numerous teams and posts can benefit from the learning.

How K4DD research supports learning

William Avis is a K4DD Researcher based at the University of Birmingham’s Governance and Social Development Resource Centre (GSDRC), which has extensive experience working with FCDO on rapid evidence reviews.

“The queries submitted by Phoebe dovetailed with my research interests in gender equality and its role in the achievement of sustainable development. The research queries allowed an exploration of factors that shape women’s participation in higher education and TVET, including access to quality education, economic resources, political participation, employment, leadership, and decision-making at all levels.  

Discussions with Phoebe and the STEP Department highlighted that increasing economic opportunities and productivity, while supporting sustainable economic transformation, is considered to be among the most pressing global challenges. Education and training systems, including TVET, were identified as one means to help equip current and future workforces with the skills they need for productive jobs and entrepreneurship”.

The research process highlighted that across the education system at all levels, women and girls are the first to be denied the right to education despite progress made over past decades.

Specifically, reports outlined that TVET systems can be gender-biased, affecting the selection of access to and participation in specific learning programmes or occupations for both men and women. In turn, this gender division of labour contributes to the perpetuation of gender inequalities at work and in society at large and has long-running impacts on socio-economic development.

The benefits of working with K4DD

The K4DD helpdesk service is able to support FCDO colleagues in a flexible and adaptable manner by drawing on the expertise and experiences of skilled and knowledgeable researchers. The team has developed a close-knit, researcher-driven organisational culture that is focused on meeting the needs of users. Phoebe and William reflect that:

“The experience of working collaboratively, constructively, and flexibly, with an emphasis placed on clear, open, collegial communication at all stages of work was fundamental to the success of the research commissions. It allowed the development of a Rapid Evidence Review that supported the use of evidence by the STEPs team in a manner that minimised administrative barriers to the use of the service”