Call for Proposal – Advancing Local Leadership, Innovation and Network (ALL-IN) Research Grant

The Advancing Local Leadership, Innovation and Networks (ALL-IN) program, a collaborative research grant program between The Feed the Future Market Risk and Resilience Innovation Lab (MRR) and the ICED and funded by USAID announces a call for research proposals from researchers at African institutions to advance host country leadership in defining and implementing research projects.

Selected research projects will further the mission of the MRR Innovation Lab to generate and transfer into action innovations that will bolster resilience, keeping rural individuals, households, communities, and markets in positions of economic viability from which they can sustain and accelerate a path of inclusive agricultural growth.

Effectively meeting the mission described above requires shifting the locus of research control to economists in African countries. ALL-IN is designed to provide the historically under-resourced African economic research community the resources it needs to fully engage and further develop and to fully utilize local institutions’ clear pathways to local policy impacts. African researchers will take the lead in defining priorities and will then draw on US university-based mentors for support as needed to enhance their capacity in the implementation and management of large-scale research projects.

We invite researchers and institutions that have the skills, talents, and ideas for impactful research, even if lacking in experience implementing and managing large-scale research projects. As part of this award, the ALL-IN collaborative team will provide, as needed and appropriate, support to researchers and their project managers in developing the capacity to manage and lead this award and others of a similar nature in the future. This award is intended to provide the opportunity to institutions – both researchers and staff – to learn by doing, in collaboration with mentors and peers at the ALL-IN management institutions.

All selected recipients of research funding under ALL-IN will be onboarded as an independent cohort and then become part of the MRR Innovation Lab’s virtual research consortium, which will meet annually for peer review and feedback on projects. These meetings, along with other ad-hoc meetings as appropriate, will provide the opportunity to further enhance capacity, create opportunities for future areas of inquiry and both broaden and deepen research networks for all participants.

Question and Answer Session #1: July 16, 2020, 4 p.m. EAT

Expressions of Interest Deadline: August 1, 2020

Question and Answer Session #2: August 20, 2020, 4 p.m. EAT

Proposal Deadline: August 30, 2020

We anticipate that 9-12 awards will be made under this request for proposals with a maximum award amount of $450,000.

In order to encourage researchers with ideas that are promising, but not yet fully developed, we will offer a seed grant funding window.  Seed grants will provide modest funding ($5000) and other support to allow the development of a full proposal in time for submission in November 2020.