2022 MRR Innovation Lab Annual Report

The most vulnerable rural communities face a compounding of new and ongoing crises. These include continuing difficulties created by the COVID-19 pandemic and new crises such as war in Ukraine, conflict and extreme drought in East Africa and flooding across Pakistan and Nigeria. At the center of each of these crises is food.

2021 MRR Innovation Lab Annual Report

Launched in July in 2019 by USAID, the MRR Innovation Lab builds upon a foundation of field studies and theoretical work to help families and communities build resilience to perennial threats like drought but also against unforeseen shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic. 

2020 MRR Innovation Lab Annual Report

The year 2020 was a year of unprecedented challenges. A number of climate-related disasters, such as heavy rains and locust swarms in Eastern Africa and drought across much of the arid Sahel, were outweighed by the global catastrophe of the COVID-19 pandemic.

2012-2018 AMA Innovation Lab Report

In 2001, the research network that would become the AMA Innovation Lab began a series of programs that generated a foundational theory on the nature of chronic and persistent poverty. That foundation has been the driving force behind our research, yielding key insights for sustainable development and resilience.

2017 AMA Innovation Lab Annual Report

In October 2016, the Feed the Future program released their new Global Food Security Strategy. This whole-of-government guiding document elevated resilience to a top objective of its global food security and poverty reduction efforts.

2016 AMA Innovation Lab Annual Report

In 2016, the Assets & Market Access Innovation Lab has continued its pursuit of rigorous, policy-relevant research designed to reduce poverty and promote inclusive agricultural growth.

2015 AMA Innovation Lab Annual Report

The BASIS AMA Innovation Lab has assembled a portfolio of projects that focus on key topics designed to bridge the gap between what is possible given currently available technologies and the experiences of most developing country agriculturalists.

2014 AMA Innovation Lab Annual Report

With these new projects, the BASIS consortium is now home to more projects than ever before. This scale gives us critical mass around several research topics, creating synergies and learning spillovers amongst our projects and the opportunity to speak authoritatively to long-standing questions in development.

2013 AMA Innovation Lab Annual Report

At the date of this report, BASIS now has a full program with 17 projects spread nearly evenly across these three areas. While many of these projects are just now beginning, this past year has seen three especially important findings emerge from the BASIS research portfolio.

2012 AMA Innovation Lab Annual Report

Any university-based research program needs to continue to push the frontiers by exploring basic ideas about the nature and causes of poverty and rural development, with the initiation of the new BASIS AMA CRSP in 2006 it was also clear that the time had come to explore concrete and practical solutions.

2010 AMA Innovation Lab Annual Report

By employing rigorous impact evaluation and research methods on index insurance products, our exciting new pilot projects will help rural families link to new economic growth opportunities.

2009 AMA Innovation Lab Annual Report

After beginning with abstract concepts, BASIS moved to empirical investigation and innovative pilot projects designed to ameliorate chronic poverty. Now beginning its fourth year, BASIS AMA CRSP findings are starting to show real impact on the ground.

2008 AMA Innovation Lab Annual Report

Beginning in 2001, BASIS began a series of basic research projects in eastern and southern Africa that probed the nature of chronic and persistent poverty. Much of this work had important conceptual elements, and while seemingly abstract, laid the groundwork for what some have come to recognize as the “BASIS approach to chronic poverty.”

2007 AMA Innovation Lab Annual Report

Addressing the challenge of poverty requires multiple approaches, since the pathways from rural poverty are not the same for all people in all places.

2005 AMA Innovation Lab Annual Report

These core BASIS projects ended in the past year, and researchers have been turning the findings into policy recommendations.

2003 AMA Innovation Lab Annual Report

The BASIS portfolio of eight carefully-selected research projects is designed to create knowledge about the constraints and deliver innovative policy solutions that will remove, relax, or sidestep them.

2002 AMA Innovation Lab Annual Report

With a cutting edge and innovative research program, BASIS produces impacts through its publications, training, education, capacity building, and informed policy recommendations that help facilitate broadly based and sustainable economic growth.