Gareth Williams joined the Programme Development Group of the State Partnership for Accountability, Responsiveness and Capability (SPARC) in October 2014. He is responsible for leading analytical work on the political economy context and political developments in the 10 Nigerian states where the SPARC programme operates. He attends the quarterly meetings of the Programme Development Group, which is the main decision making body for the programme.

The report (in confidence to DFID) assesses the impact of the emerging ‘new’ politics of Lagos on the education system and the relative political importance of education. It assesses State Government attitudes towards the education system and in particular the private education market and explores what underpins these views (history, ideologies, incentives etc). The process included undertaking a stakeholder analysis to identify key institutional and individual players in Lagos in relation to the sector, and in particular private education.

This report analyses the political economy of trade policy in Nigeria. It is concerned with understanding how trade policy is formulated and implemented in practice, and analyses these outcomes in terms of the underlying interests, incentives and institutional arrangements. The analysis helps to explain many of the weaknesses in trade policy in Nigeria, and is intended be used as a tool to identify realistic proposals for reform.

The Independent Monitoring and Evaluation Project provides independent M&E of DFID Nigeria's State Level Programmes. The Policy Practice has been appointed as subject leader for the State Accountability and Voice Initiative (SAVI) over a 5 year period, and will be undertaking regular reviews of the SAVI programme. We are part of a consortium led by ECORYS.

The Policy Practice are leading three of the country case studies (Nigeria, Ghana and Bangladesh) for DFID's Governance Portfolio Review. This review assesses the impact and value for money of DFID's investment in governance and makes recommendations on improving the effectiveness and coherence of the portfolio.

The Policy Practice provided an economist (Alex Duncan) for a team reviewing the PrOpCom programme. The team made a number of recommendations for increasing the effectiveness of this programme, which applies the ‘Making Markets Work for the Poor’ (M4P) approach. Download Alex Duncan's Paper. Making Markets Work Better for the Poor: A Framework Paper

The Policy Practice provided a coordinator/team-leader for the initial stage of the preparation of four major programmes providing support at State-level in Nigeria to governance, health, education and economic growth.

DFID’s Research into Use Programme (RIUP) aims to promote the adoption of scientific research outputs by end users. It follows an innovations systems approach encompassing the broad range of actors, institutions and policies that may promote or hinder processes of innovation. As part of the programme’s inception phase Country Assessment Missions have been undertaken in six countries. Gareth Williams took part in the Nigeria country assessment (led by Brian Kerr of HTSPE).

The World Bank and DFID are preparing a Country Economic Memorandum on Nigeria on the overall theme of “Competitiveness and Growth”. As part of the background work, the Policy Practice was commissioned to prepare a chapter on the political economy of growth and the factors and incentives the drive economic policy making.

Alex Duncan was part of a four-person DFID/CIDA team which undertook a review of the inception phase of the Promoting Pro poor Opportunities from Commodity and Service Markets (PrOpCom) Programme, DFID Nigeria’s main programme for supporting agricultural sector development in the country. This programme was based on the Making Markets Work for the Poor approach. As a result of the review some design changes were made to the programme, which is now in an implementation phase.