Page 8 - AERC Strategic Plan 2 July2020

THE AERC 2020–2025 STRATEGIC PLAN

Foreword

The AERC Strategic Plan 2020-2025 outlines the visions and goals for the network to
realize its full potential and fulfil its mission to strengthen local capacity for conducting
independent, rigorous inquiry into problems pertinent to the management of African
economies. This will be achieved through a synergetic programmatic combination
of research, with postgraduate training in economics supported by an interactive
communications and policy outreach programme.

The process of formulating a new Strategic Plan at the AERC has given us the opportunities
to take stock of past successes, failures and challenges to determine our vision and future
goals for the road ahead. It has also allowed us to put forward strategies not only in
response to changing policy and funding terrain, but also to position AERC as an active
and participating agent to influence public policy in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

The strategic themes we have developed attest to our commitment to achieve excellence
through the core networking functions of research, training and policy engagement. A
thematic focus on improving quality, ensuring sustainability, and expanding influence
has been adopted for this planning period. These three themes are customized with their
associated output pathways to provide a new and dynamic structure on how the AERC
will address capacity-building in SSA economies and institutional strengthening in the
forthcoming strategic-planning cycle.

Thus, this Strategic Plan maps out the AERC’s new approach to capacity building: it
takes a broader perspective that constitutes a fundamental change to the way AERC
operates, moving from an objectives-based to a theme-based approach, and focusing on
outcomes and impact measurement. The plan also presents new ways to engage across
the region through incubator projects for funders to consider throughout the five-year
planning period.

One critical consideration of the AERC Strategic Plan 2020-2025 is that it will enhance
AERC’s mark of improved quality, define its own momentum of sustainability, and create
a new era of policy influence in SSA economies. Of course, this will require a shift from
a passive to a more proactive stance regarding decision-making on economic policy in
Africa. It will also form the cornerstone of an institutional theory of change for AERC for
many years to come, not just during the five-year planning cycle.

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