Our Executive Director, Marie Gaarder, and 3ie colleagues Tamara Lotfi and Anil Thota, joined partners in Cape Town recently for the planning meeting of the Evidence Synthesis Infrastructure Collaborative (ESIC), a new global initiative to improve how evidence is generated, shared, and used. Supported by the Wellcome Trust and co-hosted by the Center for Rapid Evidence Synthesis (ACRES) and the Pan-African Collective for Evidence (PACE), this Cape Town consensus meeting brought together researchers, funders, key decision makers and citizen representatives. 3ie team members joined the Governance Group (Birte Snilstveit/Anil Thota) and the Data Sharing and Reuse Working Group (Tamara Lotfi) during the six months that led to this meeting. 

One key takeaway was the co-development of a roadmap, which is a global call to action for an evidence synthesis ecosystem and infrastructure. The roadmap includes costed initiatives to use AI to speed up the steps of syntheses, creating robust partnerships globally, and shoring up demand-side engagement among more than 30 ideas for the future. The meeting chairs and facilitators kept equity at the core of all discussions, encouraged youth leadership, and invited participants to stress-test the proposed solutions in the roadmap. Additionally, the discussions underscored the value of shared platforms like the Development Evidence Portal (DEP) in improving coordination and access across the evidence ecosystem. Next steps will involve funders putting out competitive proposals for organizations to bid on to advance the initiatives in the roadmap.

DEP is one of the world’s largest curated repositories of impact evaluations and systematic reviews in international development. In the first three months of 2025, we screened and added 322 new studies to the portal. Here’s what stands out:

• Health remains the most studied sector
• Most interventions that were evaluated related to cash transfers, agriculture, or the environment
• New studies span Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia & East Asia
• China, India, Kenya and Brazil are leading on implementation
• Most evaluations focus on outcomes like income, jobs and productivity

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How to make research commissioning better 

The FCDO Research Commissioning Centre—led by 3ie and the University of Birmingham—is designed to deliver more efficient and effective approaches to commissioning, collating and communicating high-quality research in FCDO’s key priority areas. We believe in strategic and evidence-driven funding that aims to better align research priorities with policy needs—and ensure smarter use of limited resources. The RCC conducted an in-depth scoping exercise before launching its funding round on research on Evidence Informed Policy Making. This process was carefully designed to identify urgent research areas that will address critical evidence gaps and ensure that commissioned studies generate actionable insights.

While such a scoping phase demands time and effort, it can help to:

• Target key knowledge gaps in the current evidence base
• Strengthen learning across an entire research portfolio
• Ensure that funded projects contribute directly to policymaking and program improvements

Read the blog to understand why scoping matters for smarter research investments.

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Effects of El Niño and Indian Ocean Dipole on the Indo-Pacific

Our recent study supported by the FCDO Research Commissioning Centre focuses on understanding evidence on the effects of El Niño and the Indian Ocean Dipole (+IOD) in low- and middle-income countries in the tropical Indo-Pacific region (South Asia, East Asia, South-East Asia, and Oceania) between 1990 and 2024. This research found that:

• El Niño events are likely to reduce agricultural production and productivity in the Indo-Pacific region.
• El Niño and +IOD are unlikely to significantly affect vector-borne disease rates (e.g., dengue) or consumer/commodity prices overall.
• Critical evidence gaps remain, as no studies assessed the impact of El Niño or +IOD on migration, conflict, food security, or nutrition in the Indo-Pacific region.

Read brief | Read blog

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Lessons for large-scale data collection in complex, real world settings



Conducting a large-scale evaluation of India’s National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) was a major effort. The flagship program of the Ministry of Rural Development aims to reduce poverty and empower women across the country. Our survey covered over 25,000 households and 7,000 institutions across nine states, focusing on socio-economic indicators, institution-level data, and women’s empowerment. From this experience, we put together learnings that offer valuable insights to researchers, policymakers, and practitioners for managing large-scale, high-stakes research projects in complex environments.

Planning for complexity (Part 1): Reflecting on the pre-data collection phase, we share how we approached survey planning, the unexpected challenges we faced in the field, and the adaptive strategies we used to strengthen our methods before data collection began.

Ensuring data quality at scale (Part 2): We devised a dynamic approach during the survey implementation phase and put systems in place for high frequency checks, field supervision, and real-time monitoring to ensure reliable, high-quality results.
Read the blogs – part 1 and part 2