Sweden has been supporting development research since 1975. For 2009, Sida’s budget for research cooperation is SEK 1 billion. From this budget, SEK 190 million is allocated to Swedish research. The goal is the same in all research cooperation: to help create knowledge that will enable poor people to improve the quality of their lives.
Sida has three main research-related approaches for reaching this goal.
- We provide support to improve the ability of developing countries to run research programmes of their own, helping them help themselves.
- We provide support to research that can contribute to the solution of important development problems.
- We support Swedish research programmes that focus on issues related to development and development cooperation.
By helping developing countries build up their own research capabilities, Sida indirectly enhances their ability to negotiate, choose technologies, make use of natural resources and develop the social sector. It puts them on a more equal footing with the developed world.
And strengthening the research capabilities of developing countries’ institutions means that local knowledge is more relevant and readily available to policymakers, industrialists, civil society and to people striving to get out of poverty.
Research is sometimes abstract and often long-term, making it difficult to see the immediate benefits of an investment. It can take many years before research capacity is built up in countries with weak research structures. The same applies to innovation processes, where long-term interaction between researchers and users eventually yields tangible and practical services or goods.
We have seen this payoff hundreds of times over, and hundreds of thousands of people around the world enjoy the indirect results of Sida’s research support. This return on investment can be seen in such projects as:
Link to Sida's Unit for Research Cooperation
