African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) is pleased to announce its Biannual Plenary and Research Workshop to be held virtually through Zoom video conferencing from 8-11 June 2020.
The Biannual is unique – combining learning-by-doing research, peer review, mentoring, and networking to build and strengthen the capacity of early-career African researchers. The workshop will bring together economists from around the African continent and globally, fulfilling one of our major core mandates – to strengthen local capacity for conducting an independent, rigorous inquiry into problems facing the management of economies in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Concurrent Sessions
Three days of concurrent sessions that cover five Thematic Groups will run from 8-10 June 2020. An agenda agreed upon by Group Chairs and the AERC Secretariat will be shared shortly with all the researchers and the Resource Persons.
The presentations in the Thematic Groups will feature research proposals, work in progress, final research reports, and Ph.D. thesis post-field reports.
The five Thematic Groups cover focal areas of AERC’s thematic research programme:
Group A: Poverty, Labour Markets, and Income Distribution
Group B: Macroeconomic Policy and Growth
Group C: Finance and Resource Mobilization
Group D: Production, Trade, and Economic Integration
Group E: Agriculture, Climate Change and Natural Resource Management
The 52nd Plenary Session
The last day of the workshop, Thursday 11 June 2020, will feature presentations of the 52nd Plenary Session on “Business Environment, Competitiveness, and Economic Growth in Africa”. Researchers, academics, policymakers, non-state actors, and economists will discuss the issue of competitiveness of African economies and the ramifications for development regionally and globally.
In the past, AERC Biannual Research workshops have attracted over 200 researchers, academics, policymakers and other economists who participate in our Research and Training Programmes. This time around the numbers will be fewer because the event will be purely virtual given challenges in movement as a result of the novel Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19), which was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The workshop provides a forum for participants to meet within a worldwide network of professionals to address issues relevant for Africa’s economic development. This provides the researchers with opportunities to apply such research ideas and policy outcomes to individual countries. They also provide an opportunity for monitoring the progress and quality of the various research projects sponsored by AERC.
