Page 72 - AERC Strategic Plan 2 July2020

THE AERC 2020–2025 STRATEGIC PLAN

assurance programmes that can incentivise improvements in university curricula. The
AERC will draw on its knowledge of what constitutes high-quality economic curricula, and
its knowledge of the conditions within African universities, to develop quality-assurance
mechanisms that can facilitate incremental improvements in curriculum quality.

There is an assumption that improvements in curriculum will lead to improvements
in student quality and research output. A range of issues affect the quality of teaching
outcomes, and curriculum is just one of these. The training of academics and access to
appropriate financial and human resources are also important factors. There is a risk
that the quality-assurance approach adopted by the AERC may not stimulate the type of
change expected due to a range of other constraints faced by African universities. These
risks need to be monitored.

Activities and Outputs

The AERC will deliver a wide range of activities and outputs in order to achieve the
intermediate outcomes discussed above. Activities are the actions or work performed by
the AERC with the financial and human-resource inputs at its disposal. Outputs are the
physical products and goods and services that result from these activities. Examples of
the activities that will be undertaken by the AERC in order to generate the intermediate
outcomes are presented in Table A1.

59 |