“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” – Carl Sagan
I've been leading the five year evaluation of GCRF since 2020. It’s a large and complex development research and innovation fund aiming to catalyse solutions to multiple challenges faced by developing countries.
GCRF has been running since 2016. By 2025, GCRF will have invested £1.5 billion into 3,000 projects commissioned through more than 140 programmes, spanning over 50 countries in the global south.
GCRF projects are mostly interdisciplinary, spanning arts and humanities research through to adapting space technologies for development. This makes it a fascinating, if complicated, fund to evaluate.
In the first year, we looked at the foundations for achieving development impact across the fund. We found that positioning for impact flows from:
- strategic and adaptive fund and programme management;
- relevance and close alignment to challenges on the ground;
- fairness and equity within partnerships and with participating communities;
- gender responsiveness, and an integral focus on promoting social inclusion and tackling poverty.
- engagement of local stakeholders right from the outset of the project.
I'm pleased to announce that our evaluation reports from the first year have now been published, and are available to
I'm proud to work alongside a talented international team of evaluators from
With much more of the evaluation still to come, I'll post regular updates.
