Ford in Africa
The Ford Program promotes a holistic model for human development. Together with partner institutions, we seek to better understand the complex and interrelated issues affecting the development process and to turn that knowledge into action. In engaging with our partners in developing settings, we recognize that local leadership must drive project planning and implementation, and that community ownership is the cornerstone of sustainability.
Research is central to the mission of the Ford Program and critical to the success of our community partnerships. We recognize that our primary contribution to the study of human development must be to learn from our community engagement praxis and share these lessons with scholars, students, public servants, and conscientious citizens devoted to fighting extreme poverty.
At the same time, we must respect the dignity and privacy of our local partners and strive to avoid research fatigue. We must develop research projects in dialogue with local communities and ensure they are designed to address real-world challenges regularly confronted by these communities.
