Two African economic policy think tanks, AKADEMIYA2063 and the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to strengthen their collaboration to support evidence-based policymaking and economic transformation in Africa.
Under the agreement, AKADEMIYA2063 and AERC will establish and implement joint capacity building and training programs in applied economic analysis and modelling targeted at African students, researchers, and policymakers.
The two organizations will leverage opportunities to carry out joint research, outreach, and events that help to advance Africa’s economic growth and development agenda.
“By bringing together two well-established networks with solid expertise and a rich tradition in dealing with macroeconomic as well as a wide range of sector-specific economic development issues, the partnership being sealed here constitutes a major step forward in consolidating African capacities for data and analytics in support of improved policy planning and outcomes.” Said Dr. Ousmane Badiane, Executive Chairperson of AKADEMIYA2063.
With both institutions at the forefront of conducting cutting-edge research, capacity building, and policy outreach activities in Africa, the MOU will enable AKADEMIYA2063 and AERC to leverage their comparative advantages and align their respective missions to enhance evidence-based policymaking and technical capacities across the African continent.
“AERC’s long term strategic relationships with various institutions such as AKADEMIYA2063 has provided some valuable lessons on how steady investment in capacity building in economic-policy research can help African governments to achieve sound management of their economies and to build strong institutions,” said Prof. Njuguna Ndung’u, Executive Director of AERC. Prof. Ndung’u is a former Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK).
AKADEMIYA2063 mission is to create, across Africa and led from Rwanda, state-of-the-art technical capacities to support the efforts by the Member States of the African Union to achieve the key goals of the Agenda 2063 of transforming national economies to boost growth and prosperity.
The main goal of AKADEMIYA2063 is to help meet the needs of African countries in terms of data, analytics and mutual learning for the effective implementation of Agenda 2063 and the realization of its outcomes by a critical mass of member states.
Established in 1988, AERC is a capacity-building institution in the advancement of research and training to inform economic policies in sub-Saharan Africa.
AERC’s mission is on the belief that development is more likely to occur where there is sustained sound management of the economy and that such management is more likely to happen where there is an active, well-informed cohort of locally-based professional economists to conduct policy-relevant research.
