The UK government is to launch a new programme to help developing countries apply cutting-edge developments in areas such as biotechnology, nanotechnology and information and communication technology (ICT) to meet the needs of the poor.
It has also pledged to provide a “significant increase” in funding for research communication and techniques for increasing the impact of research results, describing communication as a field in which the United Kingdom must “continue to earn our reputation as a leader”.
Both moves are included in the new five-year research strategy [1] for the UK Department for International Development (DFID).
It follows a previous commitment to double funding for development-related research to £1 billion (US$1.98 billion).
The new strategy focuses on six areas: enhancing growth to reduce poverty; promoting sustainable agriculture; boosting research on climate change; improving health treatments and systems; tackling “challenging” governance problems, and meeting future challenges and opportunities.
Source: David Dickson, SciDev.Net, 23 Apr 2008
[1] DFID. (2008). Research Strategy 2008 – 2013. PDF file
Excerpts related to WASH:
3. Creating and using new technologies
We will help fund technologies that are developed locally, in particular for clean
energy and clean water. We will work with partners such as China, India and Brazil
to support the transfer of technology between southern countries. (p. 19)
4 Tackling the MDGs that are hardest to reach
Slow progress in the MDGs for water, sanitation, education, health and hunger is closely related to a failure to recognise and address challenges with political processes and social development.
We will have a new programme of multi-country research which will focus on those MDGs that are hardest to reach. It will add to research from more stable environments. We will use social and political sciences to come up with new solutions, and we will research how we can:
• achieve the water and sanitation MDGs;
• provide education in difficult environments (for example, how do we reach the most excluded children – in particular girls); and
• achieve better food security and nutrition. (p. 33)
