This article sets out a perspective from the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) on the challenges of achieving research uptake. Two country case studies are presented from India and Uganda, which explore research projects under the Economic and Social Research Council ESRC-DFID-funded Raising Learning Outcomes programme. These case studies focus on relationships between the key stakeholders that enable policy debate relevant to the funded research. They are not a direct assessment of the impact that this research has had. Rather, this article explores the messy and iterative processes that DFID advisers are engaged in within the networks that they are embedded (and those that they are not), the way that they use partnerships to access evidence and promote it into policy debate, and the other drivers that matter. This article is important as a contribution to ongoing efforts to improve the quality and usage of education evidence in low-income contexts.