Other professional activities

SPIA is a sub-group of the CGIAR's Independent Science and Partnership Council, and its mandate is to play a lead role in evaluating the impact of publicly funded international agricultural research conducted by the CGIAR and its partners. Among other activities, SPIA both commissions and evaluates studies of research impacts. SPIA also helps to to develop new methods and data sources to help in impact assessment; and it participates in a broader community of practice related to impact assessment in agriculture.

The IGC is a consortium of academic researchers, led by Oxford and the London School of Economics and with its headquarters at the LSE. The IGC's mission is to bring together academic researchers and policy makers, with the goal of stimulating frontier research on questions of policy relevance in developing countries. My own involvement is as co-lead academic for the Ethiopia country program (with Pramila Krishnan of Cambridge University) and as a member of the Agriculture program; although I have also participated in a number of other IGC country programs and subject programs.