Page 31 - AERC Strategic Plan 2 July2020

THE AERC 2020–2025 STRATEGIC PLAN

region. Universities will improve the quality of graduates and ensure a regional pipeline
of well-trained economists. National governments and institutions would benefit from
access to high-quality research talent locally, thus improving capacity to implement
economic-policy reforms.

The Approach

The collaborative research model will be modified to ensure that a project is developed
for each of the five thematic groups, involving a combination of senior African researchers,
resources persons, and early-career researchers. This will allow senior researchers –
resource persons in the thematic groups – to provide guidance and leadership to frontier
research for the early-career researchers and provide opportunities to apply these
research opportunities in their respective countries.

More emphasis will be placed on generation by thematic researchers of proposals from
broader themes of collaborative research projects as opposed to spontaneous proposals:
as the latter often fail to address emerging policy priorities, or do not differ substantially
from past projects in terms of issues covered and methodology. Preference will also
be given to thematic research teams of two-to-three persons instead of individuals.
Incentive mechanisms for thematic research will be restructured to promote novelty and
innovativeness in research. This will be achieved through the differentiation of research
grants issued to signal quality and completion times, unlike the current practice of issuing
similar grant amounts to all thematic research projects, with a greater proportion of the
grant being paid at the beginning of the project.

The potential risks may be: (i) lack of financial support to mount several collaborative
research projects – including country case studies – given their high budgetary
requirements; and (ii) the challenge of achieving a perfect mix and seamless coordination
of senior African researchers and resource persons in a collaborative research project
(due to other competing priorities).

The Activities

Collaborative research-framework and country-case studies will review proposals by
thematic research groups. These studies will involve several review workshops.

Thematic research will be preceded by rigorous pre-screening of proposals by resource
persons assigned by group chairs; presentation of new proposals at biannual research
workshops; and subsequent award of research grants to successful proposals.

Workshops focusing on technical methodology, research mentorships, and policy
briefings will be conducted to enhance the analytical skills of early-career researchers.

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