About About

A fresh strategic direction

Complex and persistent social development challenges, such as poverty, unemployment,

and inequality, require innovative and evidence-based solutions as well as well-trained

development practitioners, policy-makers and scholars who can use evidence to inform

new solutions.

The CSDA is committed to understanding the complexities of persistent and new social

development challenges, assessing and seeking solutions to them, and training the next

generation of development experts who will be able to assess evidence and innovate to

solve crucial development challenges.

As a well-established and respected organisation with an extensive portfolio

of international and domestic research, public and private sector partnerships and

policy networks, we are seen as a key resource for actors in the social sector, including

policy makers, civil society partners, and private sector partners wishing to contribute to

addressing social challenges.

That is why it is critical that we keep abreast of trends and development in the welfare and social development sector. To ensure that our work remains relevant at the beginning of 2020 we took time to review our mission and vision statements and refine our model and strategic approach to reflect how our research is shaping and testing innovative solutions to the complex development challenges of contemporary society.

We took care to build on the core values and strengths that have become part of the CSDA’s DNA over the last 15 years. With the above in mind our strategic vision, guiding our work over the next five years, is presented here.

Vision statement

We aim to engage in cutting-edge, rigorous and interdisciplinary research that contributes to understanding and innovatively solving complex, contemporary social development challenges facing people and communities in Africa and the global south. In doing so we aim to challenge and shape social development theory internationally.

Mission statement

We engage in high quality, rigorous, applied, interdisciplinary social development research in order to:

• Understand complex social development challenges in Africa and the global south

• Innovatively design and test evidence-based solutions to these challenges

• Shape important social development and welfare theory, policy and practice debates

• Train the next generation of social development scholars, policy-makers and practitioners.

Our values:

• We do our research with heart, cognisant of the need to improve people’s lives not only in the outcomes of our work but in how we do our work.

• We do our work with ethical and financial integrity, mindful of the need to manage resources well.

• We conduct our work in a way that places people (including our staff and students) at the centre, aware of the need for our work to enable people’s ongoing growth and development.

Our model

Over the next five years we intend to deepen and extend our work by engaging in research, teaching and engagement across four research themes:

Our strategic approach :

• We use, test and extend the social development lens as a theory and practice framework in all of our work.

• We conduct deep, nuanced and locally relevant work and connect it with macro themes, data, and analysis in order to shape important macro social and welfare theory, policy and practice debates and develop social development solutions that are relevant for low and middle-income countries.

• We engage on an ongoing basis with relevant stakeholders across the spectrum in the course of our research (from high-level policy-makers, to local-level practitioners, and community-based stakeholders; as well as the media).

• We engage students and emerging researchers in practical ways in our research (in the field and in the classroom) in order to build social development capacity.