Higher Education and Economic Development was
the theme of the plenary session of African Economic
Research Consortium’s (AERC) Biannual Research
Workshop that opened at 9:00 am on Sunday, 30 May
2010 at The Whitesands Hotel, Mombasa, Kenya. The
plenary session, which was chaired by Abi Ajayi,
Professor of Economics at the University of Ibadan,
Nigeria featured four presentations by eminent economists:
Mwangi Kimenyi, Brookings Institution, Washington
D.C., USA, started off the proceedings with a look
at “Contributions of higher education to economic
development: A survey of international evidence”.
Next, “Higher education and economic development
in Africa: A review of channels of interaction and
evidence” was the topic for Francis Teal, University
of Oxford, UK. Bernadette Kamgnia, University of
Yaoundé II and PTCI, Burkina Faso presented
Abdoulaye Diagne’s paper on “Estimating
returns to higher education: A survey of models and
empirical evidence”. The final paper,
on “Making higher education finance work for
Africa”, was presented by Celestin Monga, World
Bank, Washington D.C., USA.
Discussions on each of these papers were led by
Ann Veiderpass, University of Gothenburg, Sweden,
Akpan Ekpo, University of Uyo, Nigeria, Bernadette
Kamgnia and Ernest Aryeetey, Brookings Institution
and University of Ghana, respectively. Thereafter,
there was active discussion by participants made
up of senior African policy makers, eminent economists
from Africa and their counterparts from all over
the world, senior officials of the development partners
and researchers from Africa and beyond.
Concurrent sessions of the workshop
proper started on Monday, 31 May 2010. They featured
79 presentations of research proposals, work in progress,
final reports and PhD thesis proposals. These covered
a wide range of topics that fit into one or the other
of the focal areas of AERC’s thematic research
programme: poverty, income distribution and food
security; macroeconomic policies, investment and
growth; finance and resource mobilization; trade
and regional integration; political economy, natural
resource management and agricultural policy issues.
One other workshop, organized by AERC
and the Global Development Network (GDN), ran from
4-6 May. The three-day workshop, with a participation
of 50 people focused on building the capacity of
economic researchers to extract key policy messages
from their research work in ways that are suitable
to and accessible by policy makers.
AERC is a leader in policy-oriented
economic research in the continent, and its biannual
research workshops have become the largest gatherings
of professional economists in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Consortium was established in 1988 as a public
not-for-profit organization devoted to building
capacity for economic policy research into problems
pertinent to the management of economies in sub-Saharan
Africa. This is carried out through two main programmes:
research and training.
In response to the special needs of
the region, the AERC Research Programme uses a flexible
approach to improve the technical skills of local
researchers, allow for regional determination of
research priorities, strengthen national institutions
concerned with economic policy research, and facilitate
closer ties between researchers and policy makers.
The Training Programme augments the pool of economic
researchers in sub-Saharan Africa by supporting collaborative
graduate programmes in economics – at both
master’s and PhD levels – as well as
improving the capacities of departments of economics and
agricultural and applied economics in public universities.
AERC is supported by donor governments, private
foundations and international organizations.
