College of William & Mary

Housed at William & Mary’s Global Research Institute, AidData supports the use of data and innovative tools to solve pressing problems, precisely target resources, and use rigorous evidence to measure the impacts of policies and investments. This grant will support AidData in strengthening its data collection on China’s transition mineral investments and its relationship to the new global energy economy. (Substrategy: China National Policy)

A long-term, core partner of the Evidence-Informed Policymaking strategy within Gender Equity & Governance, AidData is a research lab at the College of William & Mary that generates evidence to help decision makers — both inside and outside of government — design, implement, and evaluate policies and investments in ways that improve the well-being of people living in low- and middle-income countries. Over the next three years, this renewal of general operating support to AidData will allow the institution to continue pursuing two major lines of effort: creating more voice and choice for development decisionmakers in the Global South, and promoting behavioral change among development finance institutions that is responsive to partner country needs and perspectives, and underpinned by rigorous and independent analysis. Tactically, this will mean support to programs in five areas: geospatial tools and impact evaluations, research on gender equity in development, the flagship Listening to Leaders multi-year study, best-in-class analysis and data collection on Chinese development finance, and measuring foreign policy influence. Each of these programs will form a core part of AidData's new 2024-26 strategic plan.

Housed at the College of William & Mary's Global Research Institute, AidData connects decision makers and researchers who have a shared interest in working together using granular data and innovative tools to solve pressing problems, precisely target resources, and use rigorous evidence to measure the impacts — intended and unintended — of policies and investments. Building on previous support to AidData in both geospatial research and African institutional engagement, this grant aims to dramatically expand AidData's partnerships with African organizations, especially around two key themes: advancing gender-transformative policy research and strengthening the use of geospatial evaluation tools for climate-sensitive agricultural programming. By partnering with a set of four Africa-based groups with distinct areas of engagement, AidData’s goal is to help inject critical evidence into major policy debates around gender-transformative initiatives in both East and West Africa (targeting both rural and urban settings), and to empower agriculture researchers across the continent to apply geospatial and remote sensing approaches to overcome limitations in surveys and other types of traditional data. In addition, this work has strong relevance to other parts of the Gender Equity & Governance and the Environment programs, and thus offers a chance for Evidence-Informed Policymaking to bolster complementarity across programs. (Strategy: Evidence-Informed Policymaking)