Spotlight on Knowledge Partnership Programme

This week, we focus on The Knowledge Partnership Programme (KPP), New Delhi, India, for our Spotlight series. The series profiles research organisations based in developing countries.

We are in an era that is seeing an increased focus on South-South development cooperation, and India’s experience in addressing development challenges is central to this dialogue.  With this in mind, the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) have implemented a new model of cooperation support in India through the Knowledge Partnership Programme (KPP). KPP is funded by DFID and managed by a Consortium led by IPE Global Private Limited under its Knowledge Initiative.

KPP envisages producing and disseminating high quality research and analysis products, sharing Indian and global evidence on policies that impact development outcomes and support advocacy towards strengthening policy design and implementation. The aim is to step up collaboration around ideas, knowledge, evidence, accountability, technology and innovation between UK, India, the Low-Income Countries (LICs) of Sub Saharan Africa and South-East Asia.

KPP covers four major work streams that are nationally-focused but have the potential to be developed into India-Global activity, namely i) Food Security, Resource Scarcity & Climate Change, ii) Trade & Investment, iii) Health, Nutrition & Disease Control, iv) Women & Girls. Also, significant studies which do not fall into one of these workstreams or cut across multiple workstreams are grouped under 'Development Effectiveness'.

KPP seeks to create a knowledge base and take India’s development efforts / successes to the LICs. The programme is expected to generate number of knowledge products in each workstream, including policy-relevant analytical studies and briefs, workshops and events for policy dissemination, online platforms to facilitate exchange on key policies, as well as communication campaigns. KPP also contributes to and supports International Conferences with policy influencing goals, and knowledge sharing through visits of representatives from LICs to learn from India’s experience.

These knowledge products will be used in decision making (designing / improving / enhancing delivery) of public services and welfare schemes in both India and LICs. The programme will also strengthen India-UK partnership and significantly contribute to global development opportunities across LICs. 

Upcoming projects that KPP envisages itself becoming more involved in the near future include:

• global dialogues around state provisioning of food
• strengthening capacity and scaling up of Vertical Shaft Brick Kiln (VSBK) technology to Malawi and neighbouring countries 
• enabling Fal G brick and Zero Liquid Discharge technology transfer to Bangladesh 
• understanding challenges and opportunities for transfer of Indian seeds to Africa
• a life cycle approach towards economic empowerment for women and ending gender-based violence  

The challenge for the KPP team is to create quality knowledge products from each of their studies that have the potential to be shared with other LICs. It is only when this lesson learning is appropriately documented and shared with other countries, that the core essence of KPP will be met. Hence it is important that KPP develops the process and discipline of recognising potential good practices, identifying demands from LICs, efficiently contracting and managing agencies and converting study findings to knowledge products which will have a larger audience.