Page 38 - AERC Strategic Plan 2 July2020

THE AERC 2020–2025 STRATEGIC PLAN

» Providing network universities with institutional grants to acquire teaching-
related equipment and conducting faculty retooling and exchange programmes
to advance teaching and research skills; and

» Initiating visiting scholars programmes for central-bank researchers who are
members of AERC’s Central Bank Governors Forum.

The Outputs

The efforts will ensure that policy-research analysts and researchers in institutions of
government, national think tanks, and policy research institutes are technically equipped
to generate empirical research papers and policy briefs. Partnerships will be established
with several African governments to conduct country-specific capacity building projects
for policy analysis and to produce a critical mass of policy analysts for ministries of
finance and planning. Institutional capacity of network universities will be enhanced to
mount quality graduate-training programmes.

Outcome 2: Diversify the financial resource base to expand stakeholdership and
ensure long term sustainability

AERC will endeavour to create a strong and diversified resource base for SSA from
stakeholders who share AERC’s goals and conviction to enable the organization to attain
and maintain leadership in economic-capacity building alongside strong internal support
systems by:

» Maintaining and expanding relationships with current funders;
» Engaging potential funders and partners by reaching out to African stakeholders
and by re-engaging previous funders to understand their current and future
funding priorities;

» Exploring new engagements with governments outside Europe and America to
include Asian countries and emerging markets;

» Packaging support opportunities for the private sector as corporate social
responsibility (CSR) funding;

» Establishing an endowment fund to harness long term funding and flatten
unpredictable funding cycles;
» Investigating the use of crowd funding to create a separate line of funding for the
organization;

» Acquiring a permanent office residence for AERC, reducing overall
fixed costs; and

» Strengthening human-resource management to satisfy the demands of internal
and external shareholders.

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