User:Charles Owino/sandbox/African Economic Research Consortium (AERC)

New article name goes here new article content ... African Economic Research Consortium (AERC)

Established in 1988, the African Economic Research Consortium is a capacity building institution to inform economic policies in sub-Saharan Africa.

AERC has three primary components: research, training and policy outreach. The organization integrates economic policy research, postgraduate training and policy outreach within a network of researchers, universities and policy makers in Africa and worldwide.

Research Programme: The key components of the Research Programme are thematic and collaborative research projects, complemented by other capacity building initiatives. The programme approach aims to improve technical skills of local researchers, allow for regional determination of research priorities and strengthen national economic policy research institutions.

Training Programme: The AERC Training Programme supports postgraduate studies in economics and Agricultural economics and enhances the capacities of the respective departments of economics in African public universities. The key components of the training programme are the Collaborative Master’s Programme in economics (CMAP), Collaborative Master’s Programme in Agricultural and Applied economics (CMAAE) and the Collaborative PhD Programme (CPP). In both cases 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 subject specializations and electives, and joint development of teaching materials.

Vision: Sustained development in sub-Saharan Africa grounded in sound economic management and an informed society.

Mission: AERC’s mission is to strengthen local capacity for conducting independent, rigorous inquiry into the problems facing the management of economies in sub-Saharan Africa. That mission rests on two basic premises.

First, that development is more likely to occur where there is sustained sound management of the economy.

Second, that such management is more likely to happen where there is an active, well-informed group of locally based professional economists to conduct policy-relevant research.

AERC’s objectives are to: (1) enhance the capacity of locally based researchers to conduct policy-relevant economic inquiry, (2) promote the retention of such capacity within the continent, and (3) encourage its application in the policy context.