BOX 7.
AFRICA ECONOMIC RESEARCH CONSORTIUM (AERC), SUPPORTED BY THE AFRICA CAPACITY-BUILDING FOUNDATION (ACBF)

The Africa Economic Research Consortium (AERC) was established in 1988 with the principal objective of strengthening local capacity for economic policy research in sub-Saharan Africa. Its mission rests on two basic premises: first, development is more likely to occur where there is sustained sound management of the economy; and second, such management is more likely to happen where there exists an active, well-informed group of locally based professional economists to conduct policy-relevant research. Hence, AERC’s limited intervention is targeted at enhancing the capacity of locally based researchers to conduct policy-relevant economic inquiry, promote the retention of such capacity and encourage its application in the policy context. As an executing agency, AERC is responsible for all grant-making and contractual arrangements among the collaborators.

- A networking approach to capacity building.AERC’s capacity-development strategy is based on the networking concept, which is considered to be cost-effective. The Consortium currently brings together 15 funders to support a commonly agreed-upon programme of research activities, its dissemination and the training of potential researchers. This enables the achievement of a critical mass of support for a set of coordinated activities with shared overheads.

- A regional approach to training. A major part of the AERC training programme is the execution of the Anglophone Collaborative Master of Arts programme in economics. This programme currently involves 19 universities in 14 countries which collaborate to offer a high-quality master’s degree in economics. The collaboration features joint enforcement of standards through annual evaluation and assessment by external examiners, a common curriculum and its development, a joint facility for teaching electives, development of teaching materials, and student and teacher movements. An Academic Board with membership drawn from the participating universities is responsible for the substance of the programme. Currently six of these universities (category B universities) are deemed to have adequate capacity to offer core courses that meet jointly determined and enforced standards. The rest (category A schools) send their students to these category B universities. Provisions are in place for expanding or contracting the number of departments qualified to offer the degree based on performance and evaluation. The universities also collaborate in offering electives at a joint facility in Nairobi.

- A team approach to research. The research programme involves individual researchers in the region supported by resource persons to carry out research on selected themes designated by the AERC Advisory Committee to be the most pertinent to policy needs. This cost-effective approach allows the programme to attain a critical mass of professional activity in the region, alleviates professional isolation, encourages exchange of experience and creates peer pressure for enhancing quality.

- Establishing a link between research and policy. The research programme emphasizes quality and relevance of research to policy so as to ensure credibility and encourage the use of its results. As AERC has become well known in the region, national governments and regional organizations have continued to seek the services of AERC researchers and collaborating institutions to undertake relevant policy research and analysis and to use research outputs to inform policy decisions. Extensive use of local researchers and institutions has in turn promoted the retention of high-quality African researchers who would otherwise leave the continent.

- Focused on a limited thematic agenda. The programme has adopted a flexible but cautious approach to expanding its own thematic coverage in research. The current thematic areas are external balance and macroeconomic management; trade policy and regional integration; external and internal debt management; and financial management and domestic resource mobilization. Long-term sustainable development issues are currently gaining ground in terms of research interest in the network. This is aimed at a better understanding of how markets function in the African context, institutional structures affecting economic behaviour and performance, and the link between policy and growth. The Advisory Committee considers new themes subject to priorities as perceived by policy-makers and researchers.

- Strong link to other non-African research institutions. The Consortium is linked to several other resource centres worldwide. Resource persons drawn worldwide enrich the technical base and the variety of relevant experiences. Local researchers regularly team up with counterparts in other parts of the world on a mutually agreed-upon theme. This has helped to sustain interest in African research outside the region, build competence through interaction and create self-sustaining arrangements for financing research outside of AERC. Support for attachments for better research environments outside of the region has been arranged (e.g., AERC/IMF visiting scholars programme) in conjunction with the implementation of the AERC-supported research.

- Sustainability through staff development. A staff development programme and studies towards strengthening Ph.D. programmes in African universities are geared towards increasing the supply of trained teachers as well as enhancing their competence to carry out rigorous research and Ph.D. fellowships to augment the teaching capacity and the pool of competent researchers.