What is the Global Challenges Research Fund?
The Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) was a £1.5 billion UK Government initiative that addressed social, political, economic and environmental challenges faced in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs).
Running from 2016-2025, GCRF mobilised international partnerships, interdisciplinary research and innovation, cross-sectoral networks, and made lasting investments in skills, systems, and infrastructure.
Through impact-oriented research and innovation, the Fund aimed to improve lives and opportunities worldwide, contributing to the success of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Taking a broad approach to commissioning research and innovation across diverse countries, regions and themes, GCRF supported partnered projects between UK and institutions in over 40 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Funds were allocated through the UK’s research system, including UK Research and Innovation, Innovate UK, UK national academies, UK higher education research councils, UK higher education funding councils for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the UK Space Agency.
Our role
Our Itad-led consortium provided evidence and lessons on the fund’s relevance, management, gender and social inclusion, equitable partnerships, effectiveness, value for money and progress towards impacts. We worked in partnership with RAND Europe, Athena Infonomics (India), AFIDEP (Kenya), Digital Science (UK) and NIRAS LTS (UK).
Our approach
Our five-year evaluation was innovative due to its large scale (3000+ research grants in the portfolio) and combination of large-scale quantitative methods (surveys and bibliometric data science) plus in-depth qualitative approaches (including a gender audit, UK research capacity assessment, Research Quality Plus assessments, and cluster-based country case studies). This gave us a significant evidence base, including:
- 392 awards reviewed in-depth (approximately 10% of the awards in GCRF’s portfolio that covered £928.3m of the expenditure—equivalent to 62% of the total GCRF budget of £1.5bn).
- 2336 award teams, both UK and Low- and Middle-Income Country (LMIC) partners, responded to the survey on processes, outputs and outcomes—approximately 77% of the GCRF portfolio.
- 146 programme managers responded to a survey on the same topics— 100% of GCRF programme managers.
- 650+ stakeholders in LMICs and the UK consulted through interviews and country visits.
Overall findings: GCRF’s impact
Five key achievements
Overall, our evaluation found that GCRF achieved faster progress towards real-world impact than had been anticipated during Fund design. We identified five key areas where GCRF research achieved positive results:
- In both the UK and LMICs, GCRF awards achieved meaningful progress in addressing systemic challenges through interdisciplinary research and innovation that tackled interconnected issues.
- Because of their interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder approach, GCRF awards led to innovative approaches and outcomes that are less frequently observed in more traditional research initiatives.
- GCRF’s emphasis on capacity strengthening supported the development of a range of skills to conduct problem-solving research and collaborate with different stakeholders to position it for use. Early career researchers benefitted from learning how to implement novel methodologies and stakeholder engagement, while non-academic partners gained strengths in research skills. Key potential users of research and innovation were supported to apply evidence—an approach which, as award holders noted, was uncommon for research funding.
- Funding research and innovation through equitable partnerships between UK and LMIC institutions was foundational to GCRF. Despite structural inequities in financial regulations that designated UK institutions as budget holders, the awards still invested in partnerships and networks that created novel linkages between academic and non-academic stakeholders, fostered resource exchange and established new connections with research users.
- The flexibility offered by GCRF funding greatly enhanced the potential for development impact. Longer time frames and a responsive approach to changes supported award holders to achieve outcomes relevant to their context and setting.
Missed opportunities and challenges
Our evaluation identified key areas where GCRF missed opportunities to capitalise more fully on its potential:
- Earlier coordination by funders to cluster and connect awards could have significantly improved collaborative efforts, amplified impact, and promoted shared learning, particularly in tackling issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion. A clustering approach would have facilitated the pooling of insights on involving vulnerable communities in research, enabling teams to work synergistically and achieve critical mass.
- The lack of a unified Fund-wide strategy to connect and coordinate awards in similar regions or on similar issues limited the scale of impact. Funding reductions in 2021 (due to overseas development assistance cuts) further curtailed the potential of networks. Where the Fund took a programme-based approach to commissioning and connecting research, such as in the FLAIR Fellowships Programme, evidence showed more effective practice and better results.
- Many networks were sustained through the individual efforts of researchers leveraging existing relationships. GCRF projects highlight the crucial role of agile networks and champions in navigating complex environments in LMICs, leveraging international collaborations between LMIC and UK experts to bridge skills gaps and foster impactful partnerships.
Drivers of impact – lessons for future funds
Our evaluation found that GCRF’s progress along its pathway to impact was shaped by several key drivers of impact that supported research to translate into real-world change.
- Flexible funding: Opportunities for follow-on funding to develop and scale research and innovation are a major global gap. GCRF was consistently seen as unique in offering a variety of flexible funding types, ranging from network and partnership development grants to early career support and fully-fledged research funding, with integrated impact activities.
- Adaptive ways of working: GCRF researchers and innovators navigated challenges through a variety of common ways of working, including iterative stakeholder engagement, co-producing tools to help drive change, responding to opportunities to increase impact, developing networks to position credible evidence or innovations for take-up.
- Networks: Agile networks, both new and existing, were also crucial for navigating dynamic policy contexts.
- Reciprocal capacity strengthening: Mobilising mutual capacity strengthening, where both UK and LMIC partners developed skills and research and innovation infrastructures, helped to advance outcomes.
Downloads and further reading
The GCRF evaluation has produced a diverse range of rich evaluation products. The whole library is available to browse and download below.
GCRF at a glance
These learning briefs provide a quick introduction to lessons learned from GCRF:
- Nine years of the Global Challenges Research Fund (coming soon)
- Enhancing impact through a programme approach (coming soon)
- Maximising the value of international research funds: learning brief
GCRF’s impact
These reports take a summative look at GCRF’s progress towards real-world impact, both in LMICs and in the UK:
Value for money
The evaluation tracked the value for money of the fund using an innovative, rubric-based approach. Read the reports here:
- 2025 Value for Money (coming soon)
- 2024 Value for Money: Executive summary and full report
- GCRF Value for Money Assessment
GCRF’s theory of change
Developing and refining GCRF’s theory of change was a fundamental part of the evaluation. Dig into the final theory of change diagram and narrative, and read about the development process:
- GCRF Theory of Change Diagram and Narrative
- ‘Global Challenges Research Fund: using Theory of Change as a strategic framework to guide research and innovation for development impact’ book chapter in Strategic Thinking, Design and the Theory of Change
GCRF’s flagship programmes
Read the evidence on how different GCRF flagship programmes performed:
- Synthesis of the evaluation of GCRF programmes. This report combines evidence and analysis from the individual programme evaluations and a fund-wide survey.
- GCRF survey report. Executive summary Full report
- Growing Research Capability (GROW) programme. Executive summary Full report
- Interdisciplinary Hubs programme. Executive summary Full report
- Future Leaders – African Independent Research (FLAIR) fellowships. Executive summary Full report
- International Partnership Programme. Executive summary Full report
- Challenge Leaders initiative. Executive summary Full report
- Four Nations funding stream allocated to UK higher education institutions through the higher education funding bodies. Executive summary Full report
GCRF’s foundations
Read our analyses of how GCRF established the foundations for achieving impact.
- ‘Laying the foundations for impact’, article in the European Journal of Development Research
- Review of management processes
- Synthesis of evidence on integration of relevance, fairness and gender, poverty and social inclusion considerations
GCRF evaluation design
Read the reports that fed into the design of the GCRF evaluation:
