JICA-RI Hosts GDN-Japan Seminar Inviting GDN President Pierre Jacquet

On September 24, JICA-RI organized a seminar entitled “Challenges in Development Assistance: Research Capacity Building and GDN,” at JICA Ichigaya Building, inviting GDN President Pierre Jacquet, former Chief Economist of the French Development Agency (AFD), as a speaker.

Subsequently, Professor Jacquet showcased a few key approaches of GDN: fostering researchers’ connective capacity of research skills with policy-making; training high-performing researchers and building the research capacity of the general public in developing countries; and strengthening capacity and research quality. He continued to explain that in collaboration with 11 regional networks, GDN has supported to date 3,660 researchers in developing countries through research competitions and projects at global and regional networks.
Lastly Professor Jacquet touched on the challenges facing GDN such as: funding for research capacity building; monitoring and evaluation of research capacity building; and development of productive collaboration between policy-makers, civil society, media and researchers.

In a Q and A session that followed the presentation, participants from JICA-RI and other Japanese think-tanks actively exchanged views including: expecting GDN to strengthen the research capacity of developing countries, as well as requiring further commitment to linking researchers in developed countries with those in developing countries through partnerships. The question such as GDN’s efforts toward capacity building of researchers with disabilities and mainstreaming disability was also raised.