Newton Fund Evaluation

The Newton Fund supported partnered research between UK researchers/institutions and counterparts in 16 middle-income countries. It spent GBP 641,667,065 from financial quarter (FQ) 1 2014/15 to FQ2 2023/24. The Fund, administered through the UK government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) (at that time, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy – BEIS), was delivered by 15 UK research funding agencies. It covered a wide range of research topics and focused on priority research needs of the middle-income countries (MICs) that participated. It was defined by three pillars which underpin development research:

• people (strengthening research capacity in researchers and their institutions)
• research (understanding development challenges and exploring solutions)
• translation (translating research into useful products for policy and commercial use)

This final evaluation aims to assess whether (and how) its intended long-term outcomes and impacts have been achieved. It focuses on three core objectives:

1. evidencing the Fund’s longer-term results to support accountability
2. assessing value for money (VfM) to inform both accountability and learning
3. generating insights to guide the design and delivery of future research and innovation (R&I) funds, particularly those with official development assistance (ODA) funding.

This study builds on the four phases of external evaluation conducted between 2015 and 2020, and addresses gaps in the evidence base by extending the time frame to cover years seven to ten of the Fund’s Theory of Change (ToC). With the Fund’s final granting year in 2021, this evaluation provides a timely opportunity to synthesise a decade of learning.

The evaluation was designed around six evaluation questions (EQs), reframed from the original specification to better reflect the Fund’s long-term ambitions. These cover:

• the outcomes achieved (EQ1)
• progress towards intended impacts (EQ2)
• contributions to R&I systems in the UK and partner countries (EQ3)
• enabling and constraining factors (EQ4)
• VfM and its evolution (EQ5)
• key learning (EQ6)

Each question is addressed through dedicated evaluation modules, with detailed sub-questions mapped against the ToC.

The evaluation is theory-based, equity-focused, and designed for utilisation. It draws on the Newton Fund’s ToC to guide design, data collection and analysis, and to support cross-module synthesis. It is based on a sample of projects purposively drawn to reflect the diversity across partner organisations (POs), research domains and geographies.