OVERVIEW

The year 2019/2020 marks the fifth and final year of implementation of the 2015–2020 Strategic Plan.
The focus in this final year was to ensure all the targets in the strategy were achieved.
This report covers the year 2019/2020 from 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020.

AERC’s efforts to raise the quality of thematic research papers has started with restructuring of the incentive mechanism and efforts to improve the research administration and management process. This is where most of the pitfalls lie, as well as with internal capacity on the research management process. The improvements will also enhance the participation in research activities of researchers from fragile and post-conflict states, building on the Bridge Programme that has taken shape so far with the help of funds from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).

The Training Programme continued to monitor the following collaborative graduate programmes: Collaborative Masters Programme (CMAP); Collaborative Masters in Agricultural and Applied Economics (CMAAE); and the Collaborative PhD Programme (CPP). What is at stake now is upgrading of the training curricular in its entirety to reflect the frontier of economic teaching and knowledge base. This will be taken up in the next planning cycle to ensure that in future the Academic Advisory Board (AAB) can efficiently monitor and advise on programmatic activities and the delivery/pedagogy mechanism of the Training Programme.

2015–2020 Strategic Objectives

Enhance capacity building for economic policy research and graduate training in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
Build and strengthen national, regional, and global linkages to generate high-quality economic policy research and graduate training.
Engage the private sector in mutually beneficial research and training activities to enhance innovation and to deepen and broaden AERC capacity building and policy impact.
Enhance AERC visibility,outreach,and policy engagement to maximize the uptake of AERC products in policy.
Maximize mutual benefits through diversified resource base and stakeholdership for sustainability.

The approved Programme of Work and Budget (PWB) for 2019/2020 provided these outcomes:

» Policy outreach through policy briefs and thesis dissemination;
» Regional policy forums to engage and inform policymakers;
» Resource mobilization across funders to close the financing gap in 2019/2020;
» Continuing to enlarge the African stakeholdership through the AERC African Central Bank Governors Forum;
» Mutually beneficial engagement with the private sector;
» Developing strategic directions for 2020– 2025 to provide a seamless transition from the current planning cycle to
the next; and
» Visibility of AERC through enhanced website management and rollout of the communication strategy.

But challenges remain, among them the following:

» The final year of the strategy had fewer resources; therefore, 2019/2020 started with a financing gap. Even though this was covered, the Training Programme remains the one with a reduced activity level, thus inflating management cost ratios.
» The changing environment – in which most funders prefer short-term, earmarked project funding for quick results, rather than core and long-term funding – is a recurring problem that will be an even more significant challenge in the future.

To mitigate these challenges, AERC continued with aggressive resource mobilization efforts to diversify the resource base, efforts that have culminated in the commissioning of new research and training projects such as the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation’s (NORAD) Growth, Poverty Inequality and Redistribution (GPIR); the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s (BMGF) research project supporting Human Capital Development in Africa; BMGF research project on Advancing Digital Financial Services in the East African Community (EAC); Inventory of Socioeconomic Land Data in Africa (ISELDA); and the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development’s (BMZ) Programme Accompanying Research and Innovation (PARI) in Africa.