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- 6th Floor, I & M Building 2nd Ngong Avenue, Upper Hill
- +254 (0)20 2985000; +254 (0)729 111031 / +254 (0)731 000065
- info@pasgr.org
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Research
The Research Programme facilitates capacity development and knowledge production for policy relevant social and governance research in Africa through collaborations with researchers based in their home institutions. The programme aims to provide high quality policy relevant research to varied audiences; integrate policy actors into the different phases of the governance research process and institutionalise research-policy communities to facilitate uptake of research evidence in study countries.
PASGR-facilitated research has a unique focus on governance. Utafiti Sera (research-policy community) is being integrated into various research themes, to facilitate the research-policy engagement process.
Research and Policy Projects
1. Food Systems Transformation
Food Systems Transformation (FST) is a 30-month evidence dissemination and uptake project that seeks to foster research uptake into policies and practices towards strengthening of equitable, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable food systems in Kenya. The FST aims to achieve the following objectives:
- Strengthening capacity of actors across the food value chain in accessing and appropriating inclusive research evidence in practice and policy.
- Engaging stakeholders in a rigorous reflection of the Kenya’s food systems policy environment aimed at streamlining reinforcing policies across sectors, identifying strategic pathways to action.
- Facilitating collaborative long-term knowledge exchange and amplify evidence-informed and innovative solutions in the food systems value chain; and
- Mobilising last mile momentum in attaining a national food systems policy with sufficient regulatory framework for operationalising it.
Project period: April 2023 – September 2025
Project Supported by: International Development Research Centre (IDRC)
Project Contact Details: PASGR
2. Action for Empowerment and Accountability (A4EA)
A4EA is an international research programme which explores how social and political action can contribute to empowerment and accountability in fragile, conflict, and violent settings, with a particular focus on Egypt, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria and Pakistan
Project Supported by: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Ongoing work streams
- Demanding Power: Struggles over Energy Access in Fragile Settings in Mozambique, Nigeria, and Pakistan
Our research in this work stream investigates how and under what conditions struggles over energy access in fragile and conflict affected settings empower citizens to hold public authorities to account over energy in in Mozambique, Nigeria, and Pakistan.
Upcoming journal paper:
‘Aluta discontinua: Nigeria fuel protests and their lessons on midwifing empowerment in fragile and conflict-affected settings’
Submitted to the Development Studies Association annual conference held in June 2021.
- Gendered Contentions in Fragile, Conflict- and Violence-Affected Settings: Unpacking Women’s Leadership, Empowerment and Accountability in Nigeria and Pakistan
PASGR is conducting conjoint comparative mixed methods research in Nigeria and Pakistan to evaluate the impact of interventions designed to strengthen collective action among women at the neighbourhood level with an aim of encouraging claim-making by women on service delivery by local governments. The workstream is exploring preconditions for women’s leadership and collective action, role of formal and informal networks and alliances, and the range of strategies used by women, to identify when and how these contribute to the strengthening of empowerment and accountability outcomes for women.
COVID – 19 and Action for Empowerment and Accountability (A4EA)
The project took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to design a study assessing the factors that shape COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in the urban Global South (Lagos and Lahore). With this study we seek to understand how vaccine acceptance manifest in contexts with deep pre-existing gender inequalities in agency and healthcare access. We employed phone-based surveys conducted in households across Lagos, Nigeria and Lahore, Pakistan – contexts that have faced challenges in the delivery of the polio vaccine – to understand what drives attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination. The team concluded the survey in February 2021 and later worked on the following outputs:
- Comparative Evidence on Attitudes and Decision-making from Pakistan and Nigeria – draft working paper submitted to IDS Working paper series on March 31, 2021
- Comparative Evidence on Attitudes and Decision-making from Pakistan and Nigeria. Paper presented at the Political Studies Association Annual Conference on March 29, 2021
- Predictors and Women’s Political Participation in Northern and Southern Nigeria -published in February 2021
3. African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC)
ACRC programme integrates a “city as a system” approach with rigorous political analysis to tackle complex problems in 13 African cities.
The programme cities are; Accra, Addis, Bukavu, Dar es Salaam, Freetown, Harare, Kampala, Khartoum, Lagos, Lilongwe, Maiduguri, Mogadishu, and Nairobi. The programme consortium, bringing together 9 partners, is led by the University of Manchester. The programme will use an iterative trans-disciplinary approach to create an integrated framework for understanding ongoing challenges, policy options and practical action. This is supported by two conceptual pillars: “political settlements plus” and the “city as system”.
PASGR is leading on uptake and impact.
Project period: 2020 – 2026
Project Supported by: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Project partners:
- Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK
- Overseas Development Institute (ODI), UK
- ICLEI Africa,
- Slum Dwellers International (SDI);
- International Rescue Committee (IRC)
- United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER).
The programme has 4 main themes over 6 years:
- Theme 1 – Rethinking African Cities – concepts and theory: builds on the applied political economy analysis approach developed by GDI’s Effective States and Inclusive Development research centre. It will combine ‘political settlements’ analysis with ‘city-as-systems’ analysis to generate a theory-informed diagnostic framework to build comparative knowledge on the politics of urban development.
- Theme 2 – Understanding Cities as Systems: employs a diagnostic framework to identify the nature and causes of complex problems, and their potential solutions, across our set of cities. This will inform which cities and complex problems to focus on in Theme 3.
- Theme 3 – Tackling priority complex problems to unlock urban systems: will investigate and identify solutions to complex priority problems in selected policy domains in a narrower range of five to eight cities. Potential domains include housing, informal settlement upgrading, poverty reduction, health and well-being, education, and economic development.
- Theme 4 – Research Uptake; Pathways to impact; and Synthesis – to run throughout and will focus on translating research findings into impact across a wide range of policy and political actors.
4. Accountability for Water (AfW)
Accountability for Water (AfW) is a 30-month collaborative research and uptake programme that seeks to produce and share research, knowledge and evidence to strengthen accountability for water supply, sanitation and hygiene services, water resource management and good water sector governance. Led by PASGR, the programme brings together; WaterAid, Oxfam, Water Integrity Network, Water Witness, Shahidi wa Maji, Kenya Water and Sanitation Network, Water Witness Ethiopia and the Institute of Development Studies Sussex. Its aim is to accelerate and ensure equitable delivery of the SDG 6 ‘sustainable water and sanitation for all’. The initial phase of the research seeks to address the needs of stakeholders in Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia and Zambia, including government, civil society, and research and donor communities.
Project period: December 2019 – June 2022
Project Supported by: William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Project partners:
PASGR, WaterAid, Oxfam, Water Integrity Network, Water Witness, Shahidi wa Maji, Kenya Water and Sanitation Network, Water Witness Ethiopia, and the Institute of Development Studies Sussex.
Ongoing work streams
The programme outcomes and workstreams are organized into three focus areas.
- Knowledge generation: targeting high-quality research to produce relevant knowledge which addresses the priority knowledge needs and questions facing stakeholders, and enables them to strengthen accountability for water.
- Outreach and uptake: the insights and outputs of the research programme will be packaged, shared and communicated to stakeholders to support evidence-based advocacy and action for accountability for water at the local, national and international scale.
- Programme legacy: researchers, decision makers and practitioners globally, and in Africa will be better equipped, networked and inspired to advance accountability for water through policy, practice and research in the future
5. Inclusive and Just Social Protection (SP) in Africa
The project entails background research and convenings on Inclusive and Just Social Protection in Africa that address three areas of interest:
- Effective Social Protection including social insurance policies in Africa to promote excluded groups in securing sustainable livelihoods or economic inclusion;
- Understanding progress on regional or continental processes providing guidance or frameworks; and,
- Facilitating a conversation between policy makers and civil society actors about the dynamics of inclusion in policy design, implementation, and governance as well as embedding a human rights lens with SP policies and programs.
Project period: October 2019 – April 2021
Project Supported by: Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa
Project partners:
- University of Pretoria School of Public Management and Administration (SPMA)
- University of Ibadan Centre for Sustainable Development (CESDEV)
- Uganda Christian University Faculty of social sciences
PASGR commissioned three background papers and has organized a series of three (3) thematic convenings aligned to the background papers with the links below:
- Mapping and scoping of the state of current interventions in social protection by African countries
- A conceptual and theoretical exploration of ‘inclusivity, Rights and Justice in Social Protection in Africa’
- Innovations in Social protection in Africa collaborating with University of Pretoria, South Africa
6. Young Women and Men’s Aspirations and Resilience Research and Uptake Project
Key Details
Research question: what are young women and men’s aspirations, and what adaptability and resilience strategies are employed to pursue these aspirations, especially in the face of militating policy, pandemic and other challenging environments?
Where: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda Senegal, Uganda
Overview
Narratives about young women and men and their aspirations, especially in Africa, are constantly in flux. Initially perceived as disruptive and even lazy, young women and men are now gradually seen as productive, creative and resilient (Ligtvoet, 2018). There is, however, no permanence to this emerging perspective, especially when one factors in the globally disruptive impact of Covid-19. The pandemic brought immense distress globally, but it has also provided young women and men opportunities to showcase creativity, resilience and technological savviness. This perspectival instability about young people calls for a constant revisit of their world, especially young people’s aspirations and resilience in the unstable face of a global pandemic.
This project explores young women and men’s aspirations and resilience in Africa before and during COVID-19 to understand the implications of the crisis for young women and men’s lives now and in the future. The project involves in-depth work in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal and Uganda.
Project period: March 2021 – December 2023
Project Supported by: MasterCard Foundation
Project work involves three work packets:
- Part I: Analysis of youth aspirations qualitative data collected before COVID-19 in Ghana, Kenya, Senegal and Uganda and a synthesis of the evidence bringing together quantitative and qualitative data
- Part II: COVID-era data & analysis – large scale survey involving nationally representative samples among youths in the seven project countries
- Part III: Stakeholder engagement and evidence uptake
7. Utafiti Sera
Utafiti Sera is PASGR’s innovative flagship approach to evidence informed policy making (EIPM) that entails a series of structured activities that facilitates the building of a community of stakeholders working together to ensure that appropriate and negotiated civic actions and policy uptake occur around a particular public problem for which there is research evidence.
In the past four year, this programme has grown phenomenally from an initial proof of concept on two (2) communities of practice in Kenya funded by the Dutch government development platform INCLUDE for USD 90,000 to eight (8) active communities of practice supported by over USD 1 Million of funding in more than three (3) countries.
Current Utafiti Sera work involves supporting governments and stakeholders to access, appraise, and apply multiple sources of evidence in the five (5) key policy areas: Urban Governance Nairobi, Urban Governance Kigali, Accountability for Water in Kenya, Youth Employment Creation in Kenya and Action for Empowerment and Accountability in Nigeria. This exponential growth has come with exceptional workload and major changes in maintaining the quality of work as well as ensuring a good grasp of the programme’s theoretical and conception understanding of EIPM in Africa.
Project period: Ongoing / perpetual
Project Supported by: William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Utafiti Sera Houses
I. Utafiti Sera – Urban Governance House, Kenya
The Urban Governance house seek to influence decision making structures to use evidence in developing models of engagement that will re-balance power relations and contribute towards outcomes of building inclusive economies. This will in turn enable collective agency and duty bearers’ responsiveness in reversing the circumstances and policy choices which deny the urban Kenyan dignity and voice to enjoy their Right to the City.
Project period: Ongoing / perpetual
Project Supported by: William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Project implemented in collaboration with: Pamoja Trust
The house is guided by the following specific objectives
- Consolidate and Promote Innovative Framework of Urban Stakeholder Engagement that can advance Social Dimensions of Infrastructure
- Provide a framework for transformative urban governance learning that can be used in design and operation of Urban Areas’
- Provide Evidence for good Urban Governance that can be used in design and operationalization of Urban Boards and Citizens Forum
To achieve these objectives, the house is organized in three thematic areas i.e. Stakeholder engagement, Strategic planning and Teaching Urban Discourse.
II. Utafiti Sera – Urban Governance House, Rwanda
The Urban Governance house seek to influence policies and programmes on Addressing Urban Governance Issues in Rwanda in six secondary cities. The activities entail a series of stakeholders’ forums that focus on urban governance in the secondary cities of Huye, Musanze, Rubavu, Muhanga, Rusizi, and Nyagatare. The six cities have been prioritized by the government as growth poles to complement the capital city Kigali. This is expected to spread development in all parts of the country thus boosting national economic development as planned in the national strategy for transformation (NST1) and Vision 2050 blue print.
Project period: February 2020 – August 2022
Project Supported by: William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Project implemented in collaboration with: Institute of Policy Analysis and Research – Rwanda
III. Utafiti Sera – Youth Employment Creation House, Kenya
The house seeks to build networks, analyse policy, disseminate information and provide relevant advice for improving agricultural sector policy and practice in agricultural value chains focusing on the Potato and Mango value chain. The selection of these initial value chains was informed by both food security and manufacturing pillars of the Big 4 Agenda and the available opportunities to incorporate Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in related sectors of the economy.
The house is jointly co-hosted by two partners:
The Centre for African Bio-Entrepreneurship (CABE) – A Non-Governmental Organization registered in 2004, with a vision of being a lead promoter of agri-preneurs in Kenya
The Alternatives Africa Limited (Alternatives) – founded in 2014, is an accelerator for youth-owned micro and small enterprises targeting young entrepreneurs, innovators and skilled youth in Kenya and Africa
Project period: November 2019 – October 2024
Project Supported by: William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Project implemented in collaboration with:
The house is guided by the change objective: Enhancing informed decision making (policy and practice) for youth employment creation and agro-enterprise development (viz. Mango and Potato value chain) detailed as:
- Review of policy and regulations to identify gaps, challenges and opportunities for youth employment creation in agriculture, agro-processing & innovation
- Research and documentation of existing and potential for youth employment creation in the value chains
- Facilitate establishment of a Knowledge/information/trade platform on Youth Employment Creation in Agriculture, Agro-processing and innovation.
About us
Contacts
6th Floor, I & M Building
2nd Ngong Avenue, Upper Hill
P.O. Box 76418-00508
Nairobi, Kenya
Email: info@pasgr.org
Tel: +254 (0)20 2985000;
+254 (0)729 111031 / +254 (0)731 000065
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