IfD convenes a national conversation about evidence
In February 2025 IfD brought government ministries, universities, NGOs, research networks and people with lived experience of crisis into the same room.
Research that never reaches a decision maker is research that did not happen. That conviction is behind the shift IfD has been making since 2023: from producing evidence to also making sure it is found, understood and used.
In February 2025 the institute convened a national conference in Freetown, bringing together government ministries, universities, NGOs, research networks, creatives and people with lived experience of crisis. The point was not to present findings at an audience. It was to put the people who produce evidence and the people who act on it in the same room, and to ask what stops one reaching the other.
That question now shapes a longer programme of work: a National Evidence Summit, National Evidence Awards, and a creative arts strand connecting research to culture and youth voices. The goal we have set ourselves is that by 2030, government, donors, civil society and the media in Sierra Leone are measurably better able to access and use evidence when they decide.