Join us for the Africa Evidence Summit: Three Reasons Why You Should Apply for Funding to Attend
Amy Shipow (Senior Program Associate, Global Networks) interviews former recipients of CEGA’s Bursary Fund to understand how receiving funding to attend the annual Africa Evidence Summit has impacted recipients’ careers. The Bursary Fund supports select East African and Anglophone West African researchers to attend the Africa Evidence Summit, held this year in Kigali, Rwanda from June 29–30th.
In 2012, CEGA’s East Africa Social Science Translation (EASST) Collaborative launched its inaugural Evidence Summit. Now in its tenth year, the Summit showcases policy-relevant insights for tackling poverty in East and West Africa from leading African and US-based researchers. Importantly, it also fosters intellectual exchange and networking between policymakers, researchers, and practitioners, and creates dedicated space to discuss inclusion in global development research. These core components make the Africa Evidence Summit a unique opportunity for (early career) African scholars to cultivate their impact evaluation expertise and build their networks.
CEGA is committed to helping African scholars attend the Africa Evidence Summit through our Bursary Fund, which supports select East African and Anglophone West African researchers’ travel to the Summit, held in Kigali, Rwanda this year. The Bursary Fund originated in 2017, when Ravindra B. Ramrattan’s family honored their son’s legacy in development economics by offering bursary scholarships to four scholars to attend the 2017 Summit. Since then, CEGA has continued this tradition and we are excited to announce this year’s Bursary Fund Competition, which is open until April 25th.
Below, we share how past recipients have leveraged the Summit to build skills in impact evaluation, bolster their networks, and advance their careers:
1) Learn from African researchers at the forefront of impact evaluation research
In 2019, PhD student Abiola Oyebanjo was attending the University of Lagos when he heard about the Africa Evidence Summit. In an effort to refine his research skills, Oyebanjo attended the Summit in Kenya where he was inspired by pan-African scholars who presented diverse, technical bodies of work. Oyebanjo recalled how the opening remarks extrapolated challenges that different African regions faced and how scholars on the continent were addressing these problems through research. Because these research questions originated from Africans, they clearly underlined regional and sectoral-specific issues while also highlighting cross-cutting themes of data paucity and social norms. Despite differences across history and language, Oyebanjo felt that his work in West Africa benefited from the exchange of ideas with East Africans and from learning new impact evaluation methods that supplemented his existing research designs which mostly showcased longitudinal, comparative results instead of causality.
Another 2019 Bursary Fund recipient, qualitative researcher Augustina Akonner, likewise remarked how the Summit built on her past impact evaluation coursework and elevated the voices and experiences of her African colleagues. Now the Dean of Students at Ghana’s Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Akonner discussed how a thorough understanding of local context is critical when conducting research: “The research of African Academics needs to influence society. The big question is how can our research make a change in society. In that regard, researchers and government agencies need to work collaboratively to identify research needs, generate evidence, improve the quality of evidence and drive policy impact […] I was inspired [by the Summit] to explore new dimensions in the research I conduct.”
Akonner was encouraged to see researchers and policymakers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) collaborating with researchers in high-income countries, noting how this complementary relationship, alongside mixed method approaches, was critical to helping Africa leapfrog in its health, social, and economic agenda. This approach has been helpful to Akonner as she collaborates with GIMPA and CEGA, through our joint Development Impact West Africa (DIWA) program.
2) Foster new connections and strengthen existing networks
When Philemon Kiprono, one of the 2017 Bursary Fund recipients, was funded to attend the Africa Evidence Summit, he reconnected with his former schoolmate, Spring 2015 CEGA Fellow Fredrick Manang, and met other academics who shared techniques for getting his research published. Dr. Kiprono shared: “At the conference, I was able to interact with people who were practicing and was able to collaborate with them. I could be part of the evaluation teams and bring back expertise to my country. My future evaluations were then on par with methodologies used elsewhere.”
Bursary Fund recipient, Aimable Nsabimana (Fall 2022 CEGA Fellow), attended the 2019 Africa Evidence Summit to meet high profile researchers, learn about new social and economic issues, and discover different program evaluation approaches. At the Summit, Nsabimana met Amma Panin, an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Louvain and a member of CEGA’s Working Group in African Political Economy’s (WGAPE) Organizing Committee. After the Summit, they developed a joint research proposal to study the sustainability of the community-based health insurance scheme in Rwanda. Nsabimana felt that networking at the Summit enabled him to deepen his relationships within the CEGA network, and influenced him to apply as a CEGA Visiting Fellow.
3) Improve your own research
At the time of the 2017 Summit, Kiprono was working as an economist researching the importance of effective rural roads and wanted to ensure that his methods utilized rigorous evaluation techniques. Through networking and presentations, he identified new ideas to advance his own study in the publication process. Published in Agrekon Journal, Kiprono’s study, “Roads and Farming: the effect of infrastructure improvement on agricultural intensification in South-Western Kenya” demonstrated that improving rural roads significantly reduces food waste and lowers prices for products in urban areas, and ultimately contributed to the Kenyan Ministry of the Interior’s investment in improving this infrastructure. Today, Kiprono serves as the Head of Research and Policy Analysis at Kenya’s Department of Public Service Commission, where he conducts monitoring and evaluation to inform policy change and measure policies’ effectiveness.
We hope to see you at the 2022 Africa Evidence Summit! Visit our event page for more details about the event, the bursary fund, and the opportunity to present a poster.
