There’s another area where the UK can be – some would say already is – a global superpower for development. That’s the area of academic research leading to development impact. In 2015, as part of the last Comprehensive Spending Review, £1.5 bn was taken out of the aid budget over a five year period and used to establish the new Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). Seen at the time as something of a cynical move (a way of maintaining funding for universities by finding a new way of spending aid money) this was actually a very good idea. It means that the UK research community is incentivised to conduct research that marries traditional academic curiosity with the need to solve real world challenges.
In 2016 I was asked to chair the Strategic Advisory Group for the GCRF and we have produced a set of criteria that we want to see guide the way this fund is utilised. You can see the details here: https://www.ukri.org/files/legacy/international/global-challenges-research-fundsagcriteria-pdf/ You’ll probably recognise a lot of ideas that are familiar to the way we approached our task when we were working in SC UK, and the organisation, with its understanding of the ‘how’ of development, is indeed well placed to be a partner of universities and other research bodies in bidding for GCRF funding. There is at least one example of where this has happened already; details of the GCRF-funded RECAP project (“Research capacity strengthening and knowledge generation to support preparedness and response to humanitarian crises and epidemics”) are here: https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/research/centres-projects-groups/recap
Interestingly, in an era where Ministers have to fight hard to defend the aid budget against a range of attacks, research is one area that seems to have a wide range of support. Here’s one example: https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/global-britain-global-solutions-how-british-rd-can-transform-international-development/
All this is good news for a thinking charity such as Save the Children. As Eglantyne Jebb said: “the new charity must be scientific”!