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Spotlight | Supporting UK’s new platform for global research and innovation
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As co-lead of the Research Commissioning Centre (RCC), 3ie played a key role in establishing the public platform for the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office’s (FCDO) Global Research and Technology Development (GRTD) portfolio.
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On 18 May 2026, FCDO formally launched the GRTD portfolio at the British Academy in London, bringing together senior government leaders, research partners, and members of the RCC to explore how research, innovation, and partnerships can help address increasingly complex global challenges.
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Speaking at the launch, UK Minister for Development Jenny Chapman highlighted the shift from traditional funding models towards long-term partnerships, describing GRTD as “world-leading in its reach and impact.” Other speakers, including Chief Scientific Adviser Professor Sir John Edmunds, Simon McNorton (FCDO), and Professor Apollinaire Djikeng on behalf of FCDO partner organizations, emphasized the importance of science-led, partnership-driven approaches to achieving impact at scale.
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The event also marked the launch of several key resources, including the GRTD Approach Paper, the new GRTD website, and a unified GRTD identity across digital and social media platforms.
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As the RCC continues to support the portfolio, these new platforms will help strengthen collaboration, visibility, and knowledge-sharing across the global research and development community.
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Follow GRTD and RCC on LinkedIn, X and Facebook to stay up to date with the latest developments and opportunities.
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Featured | Evidence in a fragmented world: some reflections
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Aid has always been shaped by donor interests, but development cooperation is now becoming more overtly interest-driven. Can development outcomes survive inside that new framing? In this blog, 3ie Executive Director Marie Gaarder highlights three key points and two ideas she spoke about at the recently-held OECD Conference on the Future of Development Cooperation. In a world of tighter budgets, geopolitical competition, and mounting pressure to demonstrate results, evidence and learning become more important, not less. What changes is the urgency with which we must deploy them. Read blog >>
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Announcement | A new global partnership to strengthen development learning
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3ie is pleased to be part of the newly-launched Knowledge Centre for Development Cooperation led by Development Learning Lab (DLL) at Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) in partnership with leading Norwegian and international institutions, including the University of Bergen, NHH Norwegian School of Economics, the Frisch Centre, NUPI, and the International Rescue Committee. The partnership reflects a growing recognition that generating evidence alone is not enough. Development institutions increasingly need stronger systems to synthesize knowledge, learn across programs and contexts, and ensure that evidence informs real-world decisions.
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For 3ie, the collaboration builds on our long-standing work to strengthen evidence-informed policymaking through impact evaluations, systematic reviews, evidence gap maps, and support for evidence use. The partnership also creates new opportunities to connect evidence generation with learning, adaptation, and decision-making processes across the development sector.
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As global development challenges become more complex and interconnected, investments in shared evidence infrastructure and learning systems will be increasingly important for improving the effectiveness of development cooperation.
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We look forward to working with our partners to strengthen the way evidence is generated, shared, and used to support better development outcomes worldwide. Read more >>
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Featured | Can integrated farming systems improve food security in Malawi?
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Small-scale farming households in Malawi face multiple challenges, including food insecurity, low agricultural productivity, climate-related shocks, and limited livelihood opportunities. A new 3ie baseline study supported by Norway examines the starting conditions for 3,500 producers participating in the Integrating Aquaculture–Agriculture to Combat Food Insecurity in Malawi (IAAM) project, implemented by CDF Canada, which seeks to strengthen food systems and improve livelihoods through integrated farming approaches with a particular focus on women and other vulnerable groups.
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3ie is evaluating the project's impact through a randomized controlled trial across 160 communities in eight districts, tracking outcomes on fish productivity, household incomes, food security, dietary diversity, and women's decision-making. Read the baseline report >>
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Evidence Dialogues series on investing smarter in climate action—opening panel calls for stronger evidence systems
On 28 May, 3ie and What Works Climate Solutions launched the first session of the three-part Evidence Dialogues on Climate Action series, bringing together researchers, evaluators, and evidence synthesis experts to examine a critical question: what does current evidence actually tell us about climate action, and where do the biggest gaps remain?
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The discussion took place against a striking backdrop. Nearly USD 100 billion in public finance flows into climate interventions each year, yet only a small fraction is supported by rigorous evidence on what works, for whom, and at what cost.
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Moderated by Birte Snilsveit, 3ie’s Synthesis and Reviews Director, the panel featured Martin Prowse (University of East Anglia), Jan Minx (PIK – Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and What Works Climate Solutions), Clarice Panyin Nyan (International Centre for Evaluation and Development), and Constanza Gonzalez Parrao (3ie).
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Key insights from the discussion
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• | The climate evidence base is growing, but unevenly. Significant gaps remain across sectors, regions, populations, and intervention types, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.
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• | Adaptation evidence continues to lag behind mitigation evidence. While investments in climate resilience are increasing, rigorous evidence on what works remains limited in many contexts.
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• | Better evidence systems matter as much as more evidence. Participants emphasized the need for stronger evidence infrastructure, including synthesis platforms, evidence maps, comparable data, and mechanisms that allow decision-makers to access and use findings effectively.
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• | Evidence must be designed for real-world decisions. Policymakers and funders need evidence that helps navigate trade-offs around costs, implementation, equity, and scalability—not just evidence of impact in isolation.
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A recurring message throughout the discussion was that climate action is advancing faster than the systems needed to generate, synthesize, and use evidence at scale. Strengthening those systems will be essential if climate investments are to deliver the greatest possible impact.
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Watch the recording and access webinar resources >>
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Building effective and adaptive national evaluation systems: Best practices and perspectives
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3ie’s Anca Dumitrescu recently participated in the international webinar “Building effective and adaptive national evaluation system,” bringing together policymakers, evaluators, and development practitioners from across regions to discuss how countries can strengthen evidence-informed decision-making.
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The panel co-hosted as part of the gLOCAL Evaluation Week by IDEV/African Development Bank, NIGSD-EFC, and Twende Mbele discussed what makes national evaluation systems truly resilient. Practitioners and policymakers from Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, and Colombia shared hard-won lessons on building evaluation systems that deliver fast, policy-relevant evidence even in times of crisis and political change. Dumitrescu shared insights from 3ie's work on evaluation capacity strengthening, including the West Africa Capacity Building and Impact Evaluation (WACIE) Programme. Recording will be available here >>
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Upcoming events
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AI for Impact Evaluation: Practical Applications and Lessons | 3 June 2026
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This online interactive session, as part of the gLOCAL Evaluation Week, led by members of 3ie's Data Innovations Group, showcases practical AI applications across impact evaluations - from image classification of implementation sites to multilingual handwritten record digitization and qualitative transcript analysis. Targeting evaluators, researchers, and development practitioners, this program will teach participants how AI can unlock novel data sources, scale document analysis, and strengthen evaluation design. The session highlights both the gains and the rigorous quality safeguards essential to responsible AI use in international development contexts.
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Speakers:
| • | Geetika Pandya, Senior Research Associate ;
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| • | Devika Lakhote, Data Scientist;
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| • | Fiona Kastel, Senior Research Associate;
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| • | Sanchi Lokhande, Research Associate
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Mapping learning-to-earning pathways: evidence gap map launch | 11 June 2026
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As youth unemployment and the number of young people not in employment, education, or training (NEET) remain stubbornly high across many low- and middle-income countries, policymakers face growing pressure to equip young people with skills for rapidly changing labour markets shaped by the green energy transition and artificial intelligence. In this webinar, 3ie and FCDO will present findings from a new Evidence Gap Map (EGM) on technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and skills interventions—the first comprehensive mapping of rigorous evidence in this area. Covering 510 impact evaluations and 17 systematic reviews, the EGM identifies where evidence is strongest, highlights critical research gaps in emerging areas such as green skills and AI, and explores implications for policy, programming, and future research investments.
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Speakers:
| • | Abdelrahman Nagy, 3ie, Program Director, Middle East and North Africa (Chair)
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| • | Constanza Gonzalez Parrao, 3ie Senior Evaluation Specialist (Moderator)
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| • | Calum Hebron, FCDO, Higher Education and Skills Policy and Programme Adviser
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| • | Pierre Marion, 3ie Senior Research Associate
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| • | Diana Belén Córdova-Aráuz, 3ie Research Assistant
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Evidence Dialogues session II – What works for investing smarter in climate action | 18 June 2026
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Our second session in this three-part Evidence Dialogues series co-convened by 3ie and What Works Climate Solutions on 18 June 2026 will explore an important question: why has it proven so difficult to build stronger evidence infrastructure for climate action, even as funding and urgency continue to grow?
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Speakers:
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• | Ruth Stewart, Director of Alive at Future Evidence Foundation;
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• | Ian Mitchell, Senior Fellow and Co-Director of CGD Europe at the Center for Global Development;
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• | Orla Jackson, Senior Climate Manager at CIFF;
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• | Paul Ferraro, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Human Behavior and Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University, and 3ie Senior Research Fellow
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The discussion will examine the structural, political, institutional, and cultural barriers that have limited investment in rigorous climate evaluation and learning systems, and what it will take to build a more coordinated and actionable climate evidence agenda.
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Senior Research Fellow
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| | 3ie’s Senior Research Fellows Program includes experts from various sectors – including development, evaluation, policy as well as academia. This month, we feature Teresa Reinaga. For the past 13 years, Teresa has participated in impact evaluation projects performing quality assurance, questionnaire design, fieldwork organization, and survey implementation. She has been a part of work teams on different research topics, for example, health, gender, education, land reclamation, and poverty, and has authored and co-authored various papers published as a result of her research. Teresa lives in La Paz, Bolivia.
Read more >>
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Since 2020, 3ie's Fellowship Program has contributed to achieving our mission by tapping into diverse expertise and experience across the world.
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