Nature of the Collaborative PhD Programme (CPP)

Students enter the four-year Collaborative PhD Programme through a competitive process following successful completion of the AERC Collaborative MA Programme or other master's degree programmes that are course-work based and subject to external review. The structure of the Collaborative PhD programme, its course work and other requirements, as well as the corresponding time schedules, are described below. Entering PhD students will have completed master's level course work in the following three core fields: Microeconomic Theory, Macroeconomic Theory and Quantitative Methods.

The innovation of the programme is the introduction of course work in PhD training in Africa, which is a significant improvement over any PhD programme currently implemented in the Continent. Candidates in the PhD programme should be well grounded and have completed similar master's level course work in at least two fields of specialization in economics selected from the following: Environmental Economics, Development Economics, International Economics, Econometrics, Public Sector Economics, Labour Economics, Monetary Theory and Practice, Industrial Economics, Policy Analysis and Economic Management, Agricultural Economics, Health Economics, Corporate Finance and Investment, and Managerial Economics.

Academic Activities

1. Intensive Course Work

The primary aim of the first year of the AERC Collaborative PhD Programme is to push the students further toward the contemporary intellectual frontiers of knowledge through a series of intensive courses taught by African scholars and leading international experts. These courses are in the three core fields (Microeconomics, Macroeconomics and Quantitative Methods). The second academic year features the teaching of the elective courses, again by African scholars and lead international experts at a common facility. Following this, the students prepare for, and take, the comprehensive examinations-four examination papers per students in Microeconomics, Macroeconomics and two electives per student.

The following issues should be noted about the comprehensive examinations:

• The examination coverage extends from the most elementary (undergraduate) level to the frontiers of knowledge (PhD level).

• The examinations are set by a team of experts in the relevant fields under the auspices of AERC and approved by the PhD Academic Board; these experts will be familiar with the teaching of the relevant course(s) at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

• The students take their examinations in two core fields (Microeconomics and Macroeconomics) and in two elective fields at their respective host degree-awarding universities. There are no comprehensive examinations in Quantitative Methods. NOTE that examinations are conducted at least three months after the end of the CPP JFE.

• The examinations are marked by the expert examiners, and the results discussed and approved by the PhD Academic Board, before being forwarded to the students' in the respective degree-awarding universities for their consideration.

2. Thesis Proposal

After the comprehensive examinations, students will work with supervisors (in their local university) to determine their areas of specialization, select their dissertation topics and prepare their thesis proposals. A centralized thesis proposal workshop is held where students present and defend their proposals. Selected international and African experts serving as discussants, resource persons and evaluators of the research proposals assist in this process. Local supervisors also attend this workshop and participate actively in the proceedings, working jointly with the independent resource persons to evaluate each thesis proposal. In many respects the process is similar to that of the AERC biannual thematic research workshops, which involve peer review supported by resource persons. The process is currently planned such that both biannual research and proposals workshop are held jointly so as to gain some synergies between the two processes.

3. Field Work

Third-year students are involved with thesis research, fieldwork, and data gathering and analysis under the primary guidance of their local supervisors. This process ends with a post-fieldwork workshop, another centralized facility to enable students to present preliminary analyses of their research. The process, again, involves selected international experts and African scholars who together with local supervisors, act as resource persons, discussants and evaluators. It is also presented and defended at the workshop with researchers.

4. Thesis Preparation and Defence

The fourth and final year of the Collaborative PhD Programme is devoted to final thesis write-up and defence. There are two distinct parts to this period. The draft thesis is prepared during the first half of the year and presented at a centralized dissertation workshop in the presence of resource persons comprising selected international experts and African scholars who make decisions on the merit of each draft thesis. The draft thesis is then finalized during the second half of the fourth year and defended at the local university, in accordance with established procedures. In addition a summary presentation is made and defended at the workshop with researchers.

5. Programme Duration

The Collaborative PhD Programme is a four-year post-MA that makes maximum use of international and African experts assembled periodically to interact with students in centralized locations through each of the last three academic years. These intensive interactions are designed to occur twice in the second year of the programme: over 12 weeks of intensive teaching and examination of selected specialized courses, and during the thesis proposal workshop at the end of the second year.

This is followed by a similar one-week post-fieldwork workshop at the end of the third year and ends with a final one-week dissertation workshop in the fourth and final year. The workshops at every stage are designed to strengthen the process as well as indirectly contributing to the process. These structured and results-oriented interactions should be adequate for eliminating such deficiencies as lack of course work, poor thesis supervision and isolation from the rapidly unfolding developments in the economics discipline that have plagued local doctoral training in Africa. At the same time, this model enables students to benefit from exposure to international experts without losing the African experience.

6. Attachment

This model does not explicitly include an obligatory one-year (or less) overseas attachment. But it would permit such an arrangement on an optional but mostly competitive basis, as well as postdoctoral attachments that can be organized through existing AERC modalities. In order to further expose graduates of the programme to developments in the field, special efforts are made to link them, through internship programmes, to the various national policy institutes across Africa, as well as international organizations such as the World Bank Institute, the African Development Bank Institute and the World Trade Organization. Provision is also made for students to present research findings at major international conferences and to learn from them about new theoretical and methodological developments and important ongoing policy concerns, to enrich and broaden further their research interests.

Summary of Programme Tasks

In the first year, 120 hours are devoted to the teaching each of the core courses. Most of the 120 hours of the second year are devoted to the intensive teaching of elective courses, preparation for the comprehensive examinations and research associated with the development of a research proposal. Thereafter, students attend the thesis proposal workshop.

In the third year, 28 (of the 40) weeks are taken up by fieldwork and data gathering and seven weeks of analysis. Up to four weeks are devoted to the write-up of a paper containing the preliminary thesis results that form the basis of a paper-presented at the post-fieldwork workshop.

In the fourth and final year, 24 (of the 40) weeks are devoted to further analysis of research materials, which ends up as a draft thesis whose main elements are written up for presentation during the workshop on draft theses. Further refinements are expected to transform this into a finalized thesis to be defended thereafter at the student's host degree-awarding university.