The AERC’s PhD and Masters Bridge Programme, which was introduced in 2017, is an intensive 8-weeks programme for equipping participants with skills in Quantitative Techniques, Microeconomics and Macroeconomics, which are prerequisite courses for the Collaborative PhD Programme (CPP) in Economics, Collaborative Masters Programme (CMAP) in Economics, and Collaborative Masters in Agricultural and Applied Economics (CMAAE). The primary goal of the Bridge Programme is to address the limited competitiveness of potential PhD and Masters students from underrepresented countries and groups by virtue of gender, language barrier, and particularly fragile and post-conflict states, for admission and performance in the AERC’s collaborative training programmes. 

Applicants from the following underrepresented countries are eligible to apply for the PhD and Masters Bridge Programme fellowships:

	Anglophone Countries		Francophone Countries		Lusophone Countries
1	Eritrea	1	Burundi	1	Angola
2	Gambia	2	Burkina Faso	2	Guinea Bissau
3	Lesotho	3	Central African Republic	3	Mozambique
4	Liberia	4	Chad
5	Sierra Leone	5	Congo
6	Somalia	6	Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
7	South Sudan	7	Guinea
8	Eswatini	8	Mali
		9	Togo
		10	Madagascar

Students, who successfully complete the Bridge Programme, are expected to form a pool of students to be enrolled into the CMAP, CMAAE and CPP, or the Francophone Nouveau Programme de Troisième Cycle Inter-universitaire (NPTCI) Master’s Programme.