Objective four:
OUTREACH AND POLICY ENGAGEMENT

Preamble:

During the last fiscal year, AERC procured and selected a communications agency of record to help build external visibility for the AERC brand. Africa Communications Group was selected to begin work on 7 January 2020. As part of that work, a messaging workshop was held with the Senior Management Team and staff at AERC, and an external perception audit was conducted with stakeholders, including alumni, policymakers, researchers,
early career researchers, donors, and board members to uncover AERC’s unique positioning and brand value.

Beginning in the next fiscal year, the results of the agency’s performance will be benchmarked against our previous-year performance to ensure a return on investment and whether externalizing the team is a model that will work effectively for AERC in the long-term.

Visibility through availability of our publications has been a significant focus of our efforts during the last two quarters of the fiscal year. Tufts University has offered probono assessment of our beta e-library and is advising on a rebuild of the back end to global standards. Columbia University has agreed
to include our publications and policy briefs within their library portal, which reaches 450 universities and institutions worldwide, and our publications link with Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) has been restored after the url migration from Access Kenya to BlueHost during the December holiday period.