ODA is ‘Official Development Assistance’
it’s what people normally think of as the ‘Aid Budget’, the ‘Overseas Development Budget’.
The UK government spends quite a lot of money in ODA,
in fact it’s one of the biggest spenders in the G7 the G8 the OECD,
a bit less than 1 percent of our GDP, which is a considerable amount of money.
Its purpose is to improve the economies of individuals in lower or middle income countries,
these are countries as diverse as the Democratic Republic of Congo to Peru to China to India.
ODA has become much more important for us as a University just this year.
What government has done is take a large part of the science budget, 1.5 billion pounds over 5 years
and designate that as ODA expenditure.
What that means is that 1.5 billion pounds of research expenditure
has to be spent on these recipient countries, The Democratic Republic of Congo, China, India
and the likes,
and it has to be spent with the primary purpose
which is that expenditure has to be for the good of individuals living in that country.
Now this 1.5 billion is not new money, some of it is a third of it,
the rest is retasked money from the existing science budget.
What this means is because suddenly we’ve retasked 1 billion of the science expenditure over 5 years,
there’s 1 billion pounds less to spend on other research that is not ODAble.
This gives us both an opportunity in Leicester but also a challenge,
the challenge is that the pot of money for us to bid for on research has gone down.
The opportunity is that it’s been filled with this ODAble research money,
so we need to be able to shift our focus from non ODAble research expenditure,
that’s the normal kind of research expenditure that we’ve carried out over the last few decades,
to research expenditure which has a primary purpose of meeting the requirements of people
in these ODAble countries.
This is an amazing opportunity for a university such as we are,
we’re born out of conflict coming up for the 100th anniversary of our creation.
We were built to celebrate the sacrifice made by those who fell in the First World War,
to put scholarship and education at the core of recovery from trauma.
ODA money is often spent in the same way to overcome problems in ex-conflict states,
so for us and our ethos as a university
it’s a golden opportunity for us to chase research income to pursue our mission overseas.
Equally we’ve just created 4 new research institutes, one of these is around precision medicine.
What makes us distinctive in Leicester in precision medicine terms,
which is all about being able to deliver medicine to our population in a way that meets their needs,
is we have an ethnically diverse population here in Leicester.
It’s an ethnically diverse population that largely came out of the diaspora leaving East Africa in the 1960’s.
As well as being a health opportunity for us in focusing in on precision medicine on these populations,
the population still exists in India, in East Africa and in other countries like Canada.
So we can work with them through ODA money to focus in and deliver real benefit for our research.
So it’s a challenge in that there’s less money available but it’s an opportunity because it helps us retask
and focus on the research targets that we as a university aspire to deliver.
Here at Leicester our academics are already fantastically engaged with the ODA agenda
but at a peer to peer, PI to PI relationship,
which means that individual researchers will work with other individual researchers in ODA recipient countries
and this is very valuable we get some great research done here and some fantastic contacts,
and I think about this as the thousand flowers blooming.
I want to see that continue I want to see that intensify
and we’re looking in the university just now at how we might put new tools at the hands of our researchers
to make this work more effectively.
That’s fantastic that we see these PI to PI contacts but it’s not enough we are a university born out of conflict,
we are a university that’s here to put scholarship, learning, education
as a healing ointment to move us forward beyond conflict.
Well we have many countries around the world who are in a similar position right now,
we need to work with them even more intensively than we do now.
A great example is Kurdistan, in Kurdistan we’re already working there with researchers
and looking at the opportunities for capacity building,
I’d like to see that kind of effort really concentrate, focus and build.
So we need these focal points of engagement for our ODA spend.
Another good example is around research, so our Space and Earth observation science.
I’d like to see us working more closely with China, with Peru, with Kazakhstan,
with countries who have similar research ambitions,
growing capacity and a lot that they can offer our researchers and that we can offer them.
In precision medicine we should be working with the Indians,
with East Africans and indeed with South Africa and beyond.
So I’d like to see us focus around a number of themes and a number of countries
where Leicester engagement can really make the difference
and really add to our distinctiveness as this university taking us forward
putting education at the core of healing after conflict,
and we’ve created some opportunities to do this and we’ve created a new structure.
We now have an ODA steering group that’s providing leadership for the university
in identifying these points of transition, these points of ambition.
I think this is a great opportunity for us as academics, a great opportunity for us as researchers
and a great opportunity for us to imprint Leicester’s distinctiveness
as we move forward and I hope we can all do that together.