AERC Annual Reports
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- ItemAERC Annual Report 2023/2024(AERC, 2024) AERCThe African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) is currently in the fourth year of its strategic period, 2020-2025, having completed over half of the five-year planning phase. The year 2023/24 also marks the 35th year since AERC was established in 1988. The Consortium has emerged as a premier institution for capacity-building in the advancement of research and graduate training in economics. It plays a pivotal role in informing economic policies in sub-Saharan Africa. The 2020-2025 strategy is anchored on three key themes of improving quality. This improved quality will ensure its own sustainability and working with regional and national think tanks will develop an effective platform for expanding influence. These three themes provide a new and coherent structure for how research, training, and policy engagement will address the capacity-building issues in the five-year planning cycle. Over the last four fiscal years of implementation of the AERC Strategic Plan 2020-2025, significant achievements have been realised towards improving quality, impactful research and graduate training. Several new collaborative research projects have been initiated, hence providing a range of timely research themes for early career researchers. In the training programme, the development of online teaching materials and virtual delivery of the Joint Facility for Electives (JFE) and the Shared Facility for Specialised and Electives (SFSE) through the AERC Learning Management System (LMS), complemented by the AERC e-Library, has not only enhanced cost-effectiveness, but also broadened reach and standardised the teaching of elective courses across the network universities. The AERC procured Class Zoom Technology to enhance instruction and improve learner engagement; additionally, the consortium acquired Copyleaks Plagiarism and AI Content Detector (including ChatGPT), and Zumedi examination proctoring facilities, for enhanced examination integrity. There has been a deliberate effort towards enhancing inclusivity by gender and regionally in both research and training programmes. Technical training on mainstreaming gender into research and several affirmative actions have been taken to enhance women’s participation in both research and graduate training. However, these achievements have not been without challenges. A decline in funding continued to be experienced as current and potential funding institutions adjusted their funding commitments in response to the continuous impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukrain conflict. Additionally, due to political changes, some funding governments shifted their foreign policy and funding priorities. Furthermore, the funding environment continued to be one where funders preferred project funding to core funding. Thus, AERC will direct more efforts to go towards diversifying the resource base as well as designing all programmatic activities to make them increasingly attractive and cost effective in implementation.
- ItemAERC Annual Report 2022/2023(AERC, 2023) AERCThe 2022/2023 fiscal year marks 34 years since the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) was established as a premier capacity building network in the advancement of research and graduate training in economics to inform economic policies in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The AERC began the year with great enthusiasm to accelerate the pace of activities, especially with it being the third year of the 2020-2025 strategic period. The AERC Strategic Plan 2020-2025 is anchored on three key themes of improving quality that will create its momentum for sustainability and expanding policy influence. Each of these three themes provide a new and dynamic structure for how research, training and policy engagement will address the capacity building developments and the emerging constraints over the five-year planning cycle. Additionally, the strategy seeks to respond to pressing issues facing the region – increasing youth unemployment, widening inequality and persistent poverty - as stated by Ernest Aryeetey and Frances Stewart in the 2015-2020 AERC Strategic Evaluation Report. The AERC has had great achievements in the last 34 years by bringing rigour and evidence to policy making. However, it is imperative to change the delivery along the research and policy value chain by opening up to new approaches to enhance relevance, building upon the unique convening power of the organisation and scaling up AERC’s services to support policymakers in their efforts to build a stronger economic foundation and future, both nationally and regionally. By becoming a valued partner and encouraging other interested institutions and organisations to join up, the AERC is expanding capacity for economic policy making across the region as well as policy impact for positive development outcomes in SSA economies. While implementing the 2020-2025 strategy, the AERC has adopted a new approach for capacity building, which has fundamentally changed its operations by moving from an objectives-based approach to a theme-based approach and focused on outcomes and impact measurement in both the short and long-term.
- ItemAERC Annual Report 2020/2021(AERC, 2021) AERCThe year 2020/21 marks the first year of implementation of the AERC Strategic Plan for 2020-2025, which was approved by the AERC Board at its meeting in March 2020. It also marks 33 years since the AERC was established as a premier capacity building institution through research and graduate training in economics. The main objective being to inform economic policies and strengthen institutions in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The 2020-2025 planning cycle recognizes the changing policy landscape and attendant economic challenges; effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that has challenged the health care infrastructure, increasing youth unemployment, widening inequality, and rising poverty. Some of these challenges were well stated by Ernest Aryeetey and Frances Stewart in the 2015-2020 AERC Strategic Evaluation Report. The AERC has had great achievements in the last three decades in bringing rigour and evidence to policy making in SSA. Going forward, the AERC is changing the modality of delivery along the research and policy value chain. This includes opening new approaches to enhance relevance, building upon the unique convening power of the organization and scaling up AERC’s services to support policymakers in their efforts to build a stronger economic foundation for SSA economies. By becoming a valued partner and encouraging other like-minded institutions and organizations to join in partnership, the AERC will expand capacity for economic policy making across the region as well as policy impact for positive development outcomes in SSA economies. In implementing the Strategic Plan 2020- 2025, AERC will enhance the mark of improved quality, that will define its own momentum for sustainability and create a new era and platform for policy influence in SSA economies. This is the new approach that AERC has adopted for capacity building in the current planning cycle. This approach will fundamentally change the way AERC operates, moving from an objectives-based approach to a theme-based approach, and focusing on outcome pathways and impact measurement, in both the short- and long-term periods. The core of AERC’s efforts to improve the quality of thematic research will be driven by the collaborative research model. In this case, Resource Persons will develop collaborative research projects that will attract young researchers across Thematic Groups and this path will raise the quality of research in Thematic Groups and provide a supply of research themes for young researchers, including the Collaborative PhD Programme (CPP) students. Teams of researchers will evolve from individual thematic research projects, prescreening of new proposals by thematic group resource persons, and methodological technical workshops and mentorships will be conducted to enhance analytical skills of early career researchers. Quality improvement in the training programme will involve reviewing the curriculum of all core and elective courses and adopting digital learning in all collaborative training programmes. Reforms in CPP thesis research are also envisaged to advance novel ideas that are well articulated with scientific evidence to influence policy and increase the number of publications by CPP students in internationally refereed journals. A cohort of new professors/lecturers of high academic calibre within network universities and other reputable institutions will be appointed to ensure high quality level training in line with the quality target research defined by AERC and ensuring that the training meet the skills needs for African labour market as well as supply of researchers for the AERC network. At the same time, the training targeting government officials on the continent in the design and evaluation of policies will be considered a priority to facilitate the emergence of sustainable economic policies and the promotion of quality governance.
- ItemAERC Annual Report 2019/2020(AERC, 2020) AERCThe year 2019/2020 marks the fifth and final year of implementation of the 2015–2020 Strategic Plan. The focus in this final year was to ensure all the targets in the strategy were achieved. This report covers the year 2019/2020 from 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020. AERC’s efforts to raise the quality of thematic research papers has started with restructuring of the incentive mechanism and efforts to improve the research administration and management process. This is where most of the pitfalls lie, as well as with internal capacity on the research management process. The improvements will also enhance the participation in research activities of researchers from fragile and post-conflict states, building on the Bridge Programme that has taken shape so far with the help of funds from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). The Training Programme continued to monitor the following collaborative graduate programmes: Collaborative Masters Programme (CMAP); Collaborative Masters in Agricultural and Applied Economics (CMAAE); and the Collaborative PhD Programme (CPP). What is at stake now is the upgrading of the training curricular in its entirety to reflect the frontier of economic teaching and knowledge base. This will be taken up in the next planning cycle to ensure that in future the Academic Advisory Board (AAB) can efficiently monitor and advise on programmatic activities and the delivery/pedagogy mechanism of the Training Programme.
- ItemAERC Annual Report 2018/2019(2019) AERCThe following Annual Report encapsulates the impact and achievements we have made over the last year as we endeavor to support policy makers and researchers through the continued, rapid transformation and economic development of the region. Fiscal year 2018-2019 was a pivotal time period for AERC as it marked our 30th anniversary of bringing rigour and evidence to economic policy making in sub-Saharan Africa. We made a number of particularly notable achievements. Major projects that we recently embarked on are progressing very well and many new opportunities are opening up for our programmes. Among AERC’s key delivery channels for achieving the desired outcomes are the thematic research programmes centred around the enduring Biannual Research Workshops and capacity building activities, Joint/Shared Facilities for graduate training Electives, Africa-wide Senior Policy Seminars, Regional Policy Forums and National Policy Workshops. Implementation of the Bridge Programme for inclusive capacity building is making notable progress in addressing the under represented due to factors like gender, language, conflict and post conflict as well as fragile contexts. These are all on course as we look forward to a very exciting future. Informed by the evolving needs and current development imperatives in Africa, our current strategy focuses on inclusivity and enhanced visibility for policy impact, alongside the promotion of African stakeholdership for the long-term sustainability of AERC. We have here provided some of our key achievements over the last year within our defined strategic objectives.