PEP as a Bridge: Closing the Gap Between Funders and Locally Led Research

Southern researchers and research institutions have the expertise, the relationships, and the ground-level knowledge to answer the questions their countries are asking. Yet they continue to face structural barriers to participating in global development debates and accessing the resources to do so. Northern institutions want to collaborate with local counterparts but often lack the partnerships and infrastructure to do it well. And many funders tell us they want research that is locally led, while acknowledging they often lack the confidence to channel resources directly to institutions in the South.

The gap between what funders want and what Northern and Southern institutions can currently deliver, is where the Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP) works. In this issue, I set out what that looks like in practice, for funders and policymakers as much as for the researchers and institutions at the centre of it, with two examples of the bridge at work.

The underrepresentation behind this gap is something I've written about before, through the lens of PEP's Call to Action on Southern Leadership in Development Research in an earlier edition, Beyond a Seat at the Table: Northern researchers still author most articles in the top development journals, and Southern researchers remain underrepresented among conference presenters and flagship report authors. Structural barriers – to funding, data, and publishing infrastructure, including journal norms – make it harder for Southern researchers to get published and become visible to funders.

Closing that gap is central to PEP’s mission: to promote Southern-driven development through locally produced evidence, alongside our wider work promoting local leadership in development economics. Our vision is a world in which every country has the local evidence and expertise to make decisions about its own future.

Four connected mechanisms for impact

• Capacity strengthening covers graduate-level training, mentored learning-by-doing, and training for government partners in using evidence. It builds the technical trust that lets a funder commit with confidence.
• Research support includes stakeholder-engaged policy analysis, impact evaluation, and anonymous peer review on every working paper: the quality assurance many funders lack the means to provide themselves.
• Policy engagement means structuring co-production, so policymakers are partners from the outset, alongside knowledge translation and local policy events. It determines whether findings become a live policy input or a report that sits unread.
• Infrastructure means reliable funding channeled directly to Southern institutions, with administrative and reporting support absorbed by PEP rather than the research team, removing overhead that would otherwise divert a funder's resources from the research.
• This Grant Plus support means researchers come away with more than a publication, and policymakers come away with more than policy recommendations. More than half of researchers report direct career advancement from the skills, networks, and career development it includes. And since 2016 – when we began supporting research teams with policy outreach mentors in addition to their scientific mentors – 55% of our projects have informed policy or practice.

What this looks like on the ground

In Cameroon, local researchers found that subsidising fertiliser costs can mitigate climate change impacts on production, food security, and rural household welfare. The finding did not stay in a working paper: the Ministry of Agriculture asked the team to advise on a new rural sector development strategy, the Ministry of Economy commissioned additional simulations, and the team leader joined a standing advisory group to the Minister. PEP provided the mentoring, peer review, and policy engagement support, allowing the research team to produce rigorous evidence and make sure it reached the people who needed it.

An ongoing programme, Building Evidence-Informed Policymaking Ecosystems in East and West Africa supported by the Hewlett Foundation, works across nine research centres in eight African countries. PEP trains the research centre, which establishes a collaboration with a government institution; the government identifies a live policy process needing evidence; PEP trains government staff; and a joint team produces and translates the evidence within three to four months.

The bridge works when it connects to something real on both sides: the expertise of Southern institutions, and the resources and policy processes they deserve to reach.