The Newton Fund
The £735 million aid fund is poorly designed to deliver its primary purpose of addressing development challenges and advancing development for the poorest people and countries through research and innovation, and does not ensure its spending is a good use of UK aid.
Read the approach paper
- PDF download (886 KB)
- Published: 16 Aug 2018
Our approach
The purpose of this review is to assess how well the Newton Fund is delivering on its ambition “to develop science and innovation partnerships that promote the economic development and social welfare of partner countries”. It also explores how the Newton Fund’s dual purposes are pursued in tandem and how the secondary purpose aligns with the primary one.
Given its scale, maturity and strategic importance, ICAI decided to conduct a performance review of the Newton Fund. The review covers Newton Fund activities since its inception in 2014. We examined the Fund’s operations in a sample of countries, assessing whether it has appropriate governance and management arrangements to ensure effectiveness and value for money. As it can take time for investments in science and innovation to lead to development outcomes, we explored the likelihood of the Fund achieving its intended development results.
This is one of a series of ICAI reviews of aid spent by departments other than the Department for International Development (DFID), undertaken to ensure robust scrutiny of non-DFID aid instruments, and follows on from a September 2017 rapid review of the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). It also complements an ongoing independent evaluation of the Fund, commissioned by BEIS, which focuses primarily on the grant level, assessing the impact of individual research and innovation projects in the Newton partner countries. This review focuses primarily on the strategic level of the Fund and on the quality of country partnerships at the inter-governmental and delivery partner levels.
Review questions
- How well do the Newton Fund’s portfolio and approach support its strategic aims?
- How well does the Newton Fund build partnerships for achieving development results?
- How well does the Newton Fund learn and adapt?