Beyond the grant: How Ethiopia is building research ecosystems for impact

Originally posted on Oxford Policy Management blog.

The earlier pieces in this series made the case for local ownership and ecosystem-building. The Ethiopia Challenge Fund shows what those ideas look like in practice: research questions rooted in national realities, led by local researchers, and carried forward through national institutions.

Three takeaways

• The Ethiopia portfolio began with consultation and evidence-gap mapping, not a pre-set research agenda.
• The funded research is distinctively Ethiopian, from enset and drought in the lowlands to waste management in Addis Ababa and poverty mapping in Tigray.
• The Challenge Fund is more than a grant mechanism. It can be a practical vehicle for future research that is locally led, policy-relevant, and more likely to be used.

Ethiopia’s diversity offers a powerful opportunity to understand development more clearly.

Development in a drought-prone woreda in Afar or Somali is not the same as development in inner-cities. A household affected by disability does not experience poverty in the same way as a household constrained by energy access, weak sanitation, lack of finance or climate stress. An enset-producing farmer in the south and central highlands faces a different set of risks and opportunities from a young person navigating informal networks in the capital.

That is why the Ethiopia Challenge Fund matters. The earlier blogs in this series argued that local ownership is not a slogan, and that a grant is only useful if there is an ecosystem around it. Ethiopia gives us a concrete example of what those principles look like in practice.

The Ethiopia Challenge Fund awarded grants to local researchers in 2024. The Fund is guided by an Ethiopian Steering Committee made up of government representatives, academics, and non-governmental organisations, with responsibility for shaping the strategy of the Fund and helping research move toward policy impact. 

Start by asking, not assuming

For me, the most important achievement of the Ethiopia Challenge Fund is not simply that it financed research. It helped change the starting point. Before the call for proposals was finalised, DEEP undertook an extensive consultation and evidence-gap mapping process. Over 250 participants from public sector, academia, civil society organisations, donors, and other stakeholders were brought into the conversation early. The purpose was simple but important: to ask what Ethiopia needed to know.

This was not a procedural exercise. It shaped the research agenda. The Challenge Fund policy priorities were informed by draft Evidence and Gap Map findings, and the gap map framework itself was developed in consultation with academics and policy stakeholders. The Ethiopia Challenge Fund launch workshop then brought together all stakeholders, with the aim of generating evidence tailored to policymakers’ needs. 

That matters because research agendas set at a distance often miss the questions that matter most locally. A generic development agenda might ask about agriculture. An Ethiopian agenda asks about enset. A generic climate agenda might ask about drought. An Ethiopian agenda asks how drought prediction can work for pastoral and agro-pastoral communities in Afar and Somali. A generic urban agenda might ask about service delivery. An Ethiopian agenda asks how waste infrastructure in Addis Ababa affects child health and women’s empowerment.

The resulting portfolio does not read like a standard development research list. 
It includes energy poverty and children’s schooling women’s access to finance and rural food security inner-city youth networks in Addis Ababa multidimensional poverty analysis in Tigray waste management, child health and women’s empowerment disability, climate change and extreme poverty drought prediction in Afar and Somali organic fertiliser during crisis and climate-smart agriculture through enset .

That range is the point. Development  in Ethiopia is not one problem waiting for one solution. It is a set of connected but highly specific constraints that require equally specific evidence.

The value is in the specificity

The enset study is perhaps the clearest example of what makes the Ethiopia portfolio different.

Enset is not just a crop. It is a food security strategy, a resilience asset, a source of income, and part of a deeply Ethiopian agricultural knowledge system. A research agenda designed from outside Ethiopia might ask a broad question about agricultural productivity. An Ethiopian-led agenda asks how enset-related technologies can support productivity, commercialisation, gender dynamics, and poverty reduction.

That distinction matters. Evidence is more likely to be used when it reflects systems that policymakers and communities already recognise. Enset connects agriculture, nutrition, climate resilience, women’s work, local knowledge, and poverty reduction in one research question.

The drought prediction project shows the same principle in a different setting. In the arid and semi-arid lowlands of eastern Ethiopia, drought is not only a climate issue. It is a poverty, food security, and livelihoods issue. By focusing on drought-prone areas in Afar and Somali, the study points toward evidence that can strengthen early warning and support earlier action.

This is what local evidence should do. It should not sit quietly in a report. It should help institutions anticipate risks, target resources, and make better decisions.

Development does not sit inside one sector

Another strength of the Ethiopia portfolio is that it refuses to keep development inside one ministry, one dataset or one sector.

The energy poverty study looks at how lack of reliable, affordable, and usable energy affects children’s schooling. That is not only an energy question. It is an education question. It is a gender question. It is a human capital question.

The waste management study in Addis Ababa makes a similar point. Waste infrastructure is usually treated as a municipal service issue. But when examined through child health and women’s empowerment, it becomes a development issue too.

The financial inclusion study also moves the discussion beyond access alone. It asks whether financial services expand women’s decision-making, economic participation, and household food security. That is a much more useful question than simply asking whether someone has an account.

This is the kind of evidence policymakers need: not abstract confirmation that poverty is multidimensional, but practical insight into which systems are failing, who is most affected, and where public action can make a difference.

From dissemination to use

The next challenge for any research programme is not producing findings. It is making sure those findings travel.

This is where the partnership with the Policy Studies Institute (PSI), a think tank established by the Ethiopian government, is important. To help mainstream the research outputs, DEEP co-convened a dissemination workshop with PSI to share the policy briefs with relevant stakeholders. The dissemination workshop was titled: “Building Resilience to Climate Change in Ethiopia and the DEEP Ethiopia Challenge Fund” and PSI’s public information records that it took place.

That matters because PSI is not just another event host. It is a national policy institution with the mandate, networks, and credibility to keep evidence in circulation long after the workshop ended. PSI’s continuing role in advocating for and championing the findings can help move the work from individual studies into policy conversations, sector planning, and future research agendas.

This is what mainstreaming should mean. Not simply launching policy briefs, but creating a route for them to be discussed, challenged, adapted, and used by the institutions that shape policy.

A vehicle for future research

One lesson from Ethiopia is that the Challenge Fund should not be seen as a one-off funding window. It is a vehicle.

It can identify evidence gaps before research begins. It can bring policymakers and researchers into the same room before questions are finalised. It can support local researchers to lead. It can use national institutions such as PSI to keep findings visible. And it can turn small, focused studies into proof points for larger research and policy investments.

That is why the model matters beyond the current funding. Ethiopia will continue to need evidence on climate resilience, jobs, food systems, social protection, digital transformation, conflict recovery, and urbanisation. The Challenge Fund offers a practical mechanism for commissioning this kind of work in a way that is more likely to be relevant, more likely to be trusted, and more likely to be used.

What Ethiopia has achieved

So what has the Ethiopia Challenge Fund achieved?

It has created a portfolio of locally led research that looks like Ethiopia: drought in the lowlands, enset in the south and central highlands, waste in Addis Ababa, poverty mapping in Tigray, rural women’s finance, energy poverty, disability and climate risk, organic fertiliser, and youth pathways out of poverty.

It has also created a stronger pathway between evidence and policy. The studies are not all at the same stage of uptake, and we should be careful not to claim more than the evidence shows. But the direction is clear: these projects are designed around questions that policymakers can recognise, test, and use.

For Ethiopia, that is the real achievement. The Fund has helped move development research closer to the places where decisions are made and closer to the realities people live with every day.

The next task is to use this evidence. Sector ministries, regional governments, city administrations, donors, civil society organisations, and research institutions should ask what the findings mean for programme design, budget choices, and implementation.

Ethiopia does not need research that merely confirms what is already known. It needs evidence that helps decision-makers act differently. The Ethiopia Challenge Fund has shown that when local ownership is real, when evidence gaps are mapped before calls are written, and when national institutions carry the findings forward, research becomes more specific, more trusted, and more useful.

That is the next step in the series: from local ownership to ecosystem-building, to a Challenge Fund model that can help Ethiopia generate the evidence it needs for the decisions ahead.

This is blog is a companion piece to two earlier blogs: What does local ownership actually look like in a research programme? and Building the ecosystem, not just the evidence