Page 25 - AERC Strategic Plan 2 July2020

THE AERC 2020–2025 STRATEGIC PLAN

AERC and the Future of Economic

Capacity Building

There is no doubt AERC has made significant progress from what was first envisioned
over 30 years ago. The continent has changed rapidly and the economic demands facing
such a dynamic region require – and demand – that AERC modifies its approach to meet
the new opportunities and challenges that are emerging as Africa turns the corner into a
new decade. A tactical roadmap has been provided through the 2015–2020 Strategic Plan
Evaluation Report, summarized below. The Report identified several reforms in relation
to research, training, and policy engagement to provide guidance to AERC, addressing
the themes of quality, sustainability, and influence, with each of these three areas
customized to provide a new and a dynamic structure to how research, training, and
policy engagement will address capacity-building issues in the next strategic planning
cycle, as summarized below.

Thematic and Collaborative Research

Improve Quality: Close the gap between thematic research and collaborative research by
encouraging senior thematic researchers and resource persons to develop collaborative
research projects that will raise the quality of research in thematic groups and supply
research themes to young researchers.

Key Recommended Reforms on Research Programme

» Establishing a link between thematic and collaborative research;

» Developing of collaborative research projects by each of five thematic
research groups;

» Strengthening pre-screening of new proposals; and
» Diversifying the pool of resource persons by language and gender.

Evolve from individual thematic research projects to teams of researchers, including
policymakers and academics. Strengthen pre-screening of new proposals in consultation
with thematic group chairs and resource persons. Develop mentoring team resource
persons to work with researchers over the project life cycle. Increase diversity by language
and gender of the pool of resource persons.

Ensure Sustainability: Utilize the collaborative research model for thematic research in
each of the five thematic groups, involving a combination of senior African researchers,
resources persons, and early-career researchers. Target grants for collaborative research

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