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The African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), in collaboration with the University of North Carolina and the American Institutes for Research (AIR), is conducting an Impact Evaluation Faculty Retooling Workshop from 1-6 July 2024 in Nairobi, Kenya. A total of 30 teaching faculties drawn from the AERC network of the Collaborative Masters in Agricultural and Applied Economics (CMAAE), the Collaborative Masters Programme (CMAP), and the Collaborative PhD Programme (CPP) universities from 20 African countries are participating in the workshop.

During the official opening session of the workshop, Prof. Victor Murinde, Executive Director, AERC noted that over the last 30 years, evaluation tools have changed immensely in terms of rigour. He added that global development in economic science continues to adopt a broader perspective, emphasizing that the universal challenges that come with this development demands better solutions. “ We have to bring these tools closer home so that anyone working in Africa is brought at closer parity with the rest of the world”.

Prof. Victor Murinde took this opportunity to publicize AERC noting that the organization is a leader in policy-oriented economic research on the continent. The AERC was established in 1988 as a public not-for-profit international organization devoted to building capacity for economic policy research into problems pertinent to the management of economies in sub-Saharan Africa.

He said that the AERC is a network that builds capacity through three primary components namely research, graduate training in economics, and communications and policy outreach programmes. The organization integrates high quality economic policy research, postgraduate training, and policy outreach within a vast network of researchers, universities, and policy makers across Africa and beyond.

“The AERC has several delivery mechanisms including Collaborative Research done by seasoned researchers pooling human capital from within Africa and without to work on topics of interest; Thematic Research for early career researchers who learn by doing research under mentorship from AERC resource persons and Research by AERC network universities done by faculty (Faculty Research) and students (Thesis Research),” he added.

This workshop, whose key objective is to equip Faculty Members with tools for impact evaluation will run for one week. The tools that will be discussed are key for individual research and for teaching research methods and econometrics in graduate studies. These tools are meant to improve research, teaching and graduate supervision skills for excellence in the AERC graduate programmes.

The workshop is designed and taught by experts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, AIR, and United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight.