ALRE Research Note
Latest articles
ALRE Research Note 6: ALRE Report on Evidence Demand on Inclusive Agricultural Commercialisation in Africa
June 9, 2022 / ALRE Research Note PublicationsWritten by: Louise Clark and Joe Taylor
The Agricultural Policy Research in Africa (APRA) programme has generated new evidence and insights into different pathways to inclusive agricultural commercialisation. As part of APRA, the Accompanied Learning on Relevance and Effectiveness (ALRE) team worked to understand how evidence demand enabled researchers to identify and refine the most relevant and insightful policy messages; in turn encouraging them to go beyond mere analysis of the context and problem and consider how their evidence offered potential solutions to specific policy questions. Insights on evidence demand from ALRE-facilitated activities and events are outlined in this paper.
ALRE Research Note 5: Lessons Learnt From Delivering the Agricultural Policy Research in Africa (APRA) Programme
June 6, 2022 / ALRE Research Note PublicationsWritten by: Louise Clark and Martin Whiteside
The Agricultural Policy Research in Africa (APRA) programme was a six-year (2016–2022), £7 million research initiative of the Future Agricultures Consortium (FAC), to produce high-quality evidence to inform policy and practice on future agricultural commercialisation options and investments in sub-Saharan Africa. This document summarises the key lessons learnt during the six years of the APRA programme, to provide advice for the future planning of evidence to policy programmes.
Research to Policy Influencing – Lessons from APRA on Efficiency, Effectiveness and Sustainability
July 15, 2021 / ALRE Research Note PublicationsWritten by, Martin Whiteside
This paper presents some of the learning on efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability generated by an accompanied learning process; which supported the latter part of a six-year research programme on agricultural commercialisation covering nine African countries and involving multiple research and policy influencing teams.
ALRE Stakeholder Survey Analysis
December 15, 2020 / ALRE Research NoteWritten by, Louise Clark and Ed Small.
The Agricultural Policy Research in Africa (APRA) programme has an innovative monitoring, evaluation and learning approach known as the ‘Accompanied Learning on Relevance and Effectiveness’ (ALRE), which is being delivered by a small team of embedded evaluation specialists. ALRE has conducted a survey on agricultural commercialisation with key stakeholders in Africa to improve understanding of the policy issues related to inclusive agricultural commercialisation that require better-quality evidence. The insights generated are intended to support researchers to better frame their research around stakeholders’ priority policy issues across the African continent.
ALRE Stakeholder Survey Analysis: Key Findings
December 15, 2020 / ALRE Research NoteWritten by, Louise Clark and Ed Small.
This summary shares the results of a stakeholder survey on the policy issues and demand for evidence related to inclusive agricultural commercialisation across Africa by the Accompanied Learning for Relevance and Effectiveness (ALRE) team of the Agricultural Policy Research in Africa (APRA) programme. The survey collected data between January and March 2020 on a series of closed questions to i) understand the top five policy priorities to support agricultural commercialisation and the most effective communication methods, and ii) the different factors and the role of research to influence inclusive agricultural commercialisation.
ALRE Research Note : The Diamond of Influence, a Model for Exploring Behaviour in Research to Policy Linkages
November 19, 2020 / ALRE Research NoteWritten by, Louise Clark
This learning paper presents an initial analysis of the emerging research to policy linkages within the Agricultural Policy Research in Africa (APRA) programme of the Future Agricultures Consortium, which is funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).
APRA has an innovative monitoring, evaluation and learning approach known as the ‘Accompanied Learning on Relevance and Effectiveness’ (ALRE), which is being delivered by a small team of embedded evaluation specialists. This paper discusses how ALRE has applied the COM-B (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation and Behaviour) (Mayne 2018; Mayne 2016; Michie, van Stralen and West 2011) model of behaviour change to explore the interactions and influencing strategies between researchers and policymakers in the context of agricultural policy research in Africa. These insights have produced the Diamond of Influence, a new ALRE-adapted model, which applies each of the COM-B elements to discuss the different aspects of research to policy processes, drawing on examples of how researchers in each of the APRA focus countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zimbabwe) are engaging in policy spaces.