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The goal of the research, funded by the US National Institutes of Health and based out of the American Cancer Society, is to identify and explain the political economy of the intersection of public health policy and tobacco control, focusing in its first five year funded study (2013-2018) on three sub-Saharan African countries (Kenya, Zambia, and Malawi). The impetus for this study was that, as tobacco control measures increased in high-income countries, tobacco transnationals focused more on growing more markets in low- and middle-income countries, notably in Africa. One of the ways in which they attempt to influence tobacco control measures in these countries is by emphasizing the importance of tobacco farming on rural livelihoods, and countries’ foreign exchange earnings and economic development. The multi-method studies under this research program challenge these arguments empirically and theoretically. A second five-year study (2017-2022) deepens the research in these three SSA countries, and adds Indonesia to the group. The second study period focuses more on tobacco farmer livelihoods, and alternatives to tobacco as a viable economic crop. In 2019, with new four-year funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), two new SSA countries joined the research project: Zimbabwe and Mozambique.