Policy shapes everything. It determines which communities receive electricity. Which roads get built. How health budgets are allocated. Whether girls stay in school.

And too much of Uganda’s policy is made without sufficient evidence to back it up.

This is not a criticism of policymakers. It is a structural problem. Rigorous, locally grounded research on Uganda’s development challenges is expensive, time-consuming, and — crucially — often not reaching the decision-makers who need it. Meanwhile, international research frequently misses the nuance of Ugandan communities, applying frameworks designed for other contexts and arriving at conclusions that do not translate.

The gap between what is known and what informs decisions costs lives. It misdirects resources. It means well-intentioned programmes fail because they were not built on an accurate understanding of the problem they were trying to solve.

Novus Innovation Initiative’s Resilient Research pillar exists to close this gap. We conduct scientific research that is rigorous, relevant, and designed to inform action on Uganda’s most pressing development challenges. We work with communities, not on them — ensuring that the people whose lives are being studied are partners in the process, not subjects.

Good research is not a luxury. It is the foundation of good decision-making. And in a country with Uganda’s potential and Uganda’s challenges, decisions made on poor evidence are a cost no one can afford.

Evidence-based change starts here.