Page 18 - AERC Strategic Plan 2 July2020

THE AERC 2020–2025 STRATEGIC PLAN

In 2017, an intensive eight-week bridging programme was introduced for potential
master’s and PhD students from fragile states (conflict and post-conflict) to improve their
competencies in macroeconomics, microeconomics, and quantitative methods and to
facilitate their admission into the AERC training programmes. This group was being left
behind due to the fragile context and weak institutions in their countries. So far, a total
of 15 out of 72 master’s and eight out of 29 PhD bridge-programme alumni have obtained
admission and been awarded CMAP, CMAAE, and CPP scholarships as of December 2019.
The students were drawn from Burundi, Central African Republic, Eritrea, DR Congo,
Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Mozambique, Madagascar, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South
Sudan, and Togo.

The Joint Facility for Electives (JFE) and Shared Facility for Specialization and Electives
(SFSE) grew into an effective delivery mechanism for offering a large menu of CMAP,
CMAAE, and CPP elective courses that individual university departments would otherwise
be unable to offer, bringing together global experts in specific subject areas, providing
lecturers with greater access to recent teaching materials for upgrading courses in their
home universities, and creating unique, cross-regional networking opportunities to
participating faculty members and students.

As of December 2019, over 4,000 master’s and 400 PhD alumni had been produced,
many of whom are researchers, policy analysts, policymakers, and thought leaders in
universities, government institutions, national think tanks, and policy research institutes.
Institutional capacities of public universities in SSA that offer quality graduate training
in Economics and Agricultural Economics have been significantly improved following the
AERC support toward the upgrading of teaching infrastructure, staff development, faculty
exchange, and short-term teaching-faculty retooling workshops.

The research programme has increased capacity for policy-oriented economic
research across SSA.

Thematic Research Themes

Croup 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
4,520 thematic researchers from 41 SSA countries
51 Plenary Sessions of Biannual Research Workshops – over 10,000 researchers
and policymakers in attendance

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