Part of Canada’s foreign affairs and development efforts, IDRC invests in knowledge, innovation, and solutions to improve lives and livelihoods in the developing world. Bringing together the right partners around opportunities for impact, IDRC builds leaders for today and tomorrow and helps drive large-scale positive change.
IDRC was established by an act of Canada’s parliament in 1970 to help developing countries find solutions to their challenges. The International Development Research Centre Act describes the Centre’s mandate: “to initiate, encourage, support, and conduct research into the problems of the developing regions of the world and into the means for applying and adapting scientific, technical, and other knowledge to the economic and social advancement of those regions.”
The Centre is governed by a board of up to 14 governors, whose chairperson reports to Canada’s parliament through the Minister of International Development.
Our head office is in Ottawa, Canada. Four regional offices help ensure the relevance of our work. They are located in Cairo, Egypt; Montevideo, Uruguay; Nairobi, Kenya; and New Delhi, India.
IDRC believes that research and innovation hold the keys to progress in developing countries.
To make knowledge a tool for addressing pressing challenges,
- we provide researchers in developing countries with the financial resources, advice, and training that will help them find solutions to the local problems they identify
- we encourage sharing knowledge with policymakers, other researchers, and communities around the world
- we foster new talent by offering fellowships and awards
- we disseminate research findings and strive to get new knowledge into the hands of those who can use it.