CEGA supports activities at all stages of the innovation-research-policy impact cycle.
We identify research needs
Leaders are hungry for better data and evidence to inform their decisions. Too often, they must make important choices without fully understanding the realities of people’s lives or how to design approaches for maximum impact. CEGA works with leaders in government, private philanthropy, technology companies, and nonprofit organizations to identify where rigorous research about social and economic development programs is needed.
We generate evidence
CEGA supports research that leverages the most relevant and useful data, methods, and partnerships available to answer critical policy questions. Through competitive funding rounds, CEGA enables researchers to test promising ideas in the field, collecting outcome data directly from poor households, small businesses, and communities. We pride ourselves in developing and using innovative tools and methods to bring the most credible and rigorous evidence available to policy-makers.
We improve the quality of evidence
CEGA improves the quality and credibility of the data, evidence, tools, and analytical methods used to drive large-scale societal impact by promoting high standards for research transparency and reproducibility and promoting the use of cutting-edge measurement tools and methods — transforming the way that evidence is generated.
We make the evidence ecosystem more inclusive
CEGA advances diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in our work and across the evidence-informed policy ecosystem by elevating low- and middle-income country scholars, women, and underrepresented groups and building scholars’ skills and capabilities to produce policy-relevant evidence and communications.
We effectively deliver evidence, insights, and tools
CEGA ensures that the evidence, insights, and tools we generate are effectively delivered (and put to use) by leaders by promoting meaningful collaboration between researchers and policymakers and sharing research with key decision-makers.
With Satellite Imagery, CEGA Researchers Chart New Frontiers in Measuring Agriculture
Measuring agricultural productivity of smallholder farmers helps us evaluate the effectiveness of agricultural interventions, and improve our knowledge of rural poverty around the globe. However, traditional survey-based methods of measuring agricultural productivity can be expensive, inaccurate, and time-intensive.
In 2014-2015, CEGA affiliated faculty Marshall Burke (Stanford) and David Lobell (Stanford)—in collaboration with One Acre Fund—harnessed high-resolution satellite imagery to measure agricultural productivity of smallholder farmers in western Kenya. The study helped expand the frontiers of geospatial analytics in low-and middle-income (LMIC) countries, and contributed to the founding of Atlas AI, a Public Benefit Corporation that scales non-traditional data, such as satellite imagery, and innovative measurement techniques, such as uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI), in low-resource countries.
Burke and Lobell used high-resolution satellite imagery in combination with field data from smallholder plots in Kenya to demonstrate that visual indices calculated with satellite imagery were valid and reliable in detecting small plots’ yields. These studies have opened up a range of possible uses of satellite data, including better understanding why some fields and farmers are more productive than others, and in inexpensively measuring impact of specific interventions designed to boost productivity. The data insights and methods around estimating crop yields are now being implemented at scale by Atlas AI.
