Background and Context
Established in 1988, the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) has grown to be a premier capacity-building institution for advancing research and graduate training to inform African economic policies. The consortium’s mandate and strategic mission are based on the belief that sustained development in Sub-Saharan Africa requires well-trained, locally-based professional economists. A highly integrated knowledge organization spanning research, training, and policy outreach, AERC is now a vast network of universities, policymakers, researchers, educators, and international resource persons.
The Call for African Researchers
AERC is organizing a technical workshop for researchers from underrepresented groups of African countries. The workshop aims to enhance the research methods, research proposal writing, and presentation skills of all researchers and from fragile, post-conflict, and marginalized Africa, with priority given to women participants. The workshop will take place from 16- 27 September 2024 in Nairobi, Kenya. The goal is to build the capacity of researchers and fragile and post-conflict state researchers and analysts to conduct rigorous and policy-relevant research to support informed policymaking in these countries. The technical workshop is expected to contribute significantly to attaining the goal by building and strengthening the research, academic writing, and presentation skills of women and other researchers from fragile and post-conflict states of Africa.
The course will cover several topics on research methods, including the following: identifying a research topic, asking research questions that focus on African priorities, the art of conducting a critical literature review, data management, data analysis, anchoring the analysis in theory, research paper/proposal writing, and presentation skills. Several practical exercises on materials covered and practical issues related to the course will be conducted. Participants will also be introduced to some econometric software for their use.
Eligibility and Submission of Expression of Interest
To be eligible, one must satisfy the following criteria:
- At least a recent PhD Degree in Economics and its sub-disciplines (Development Economics/Studies, Agricultural Economics, …etc)
- Be a national of an African country.
- Preference will be given to women, fragile and post-conflict states, and marginalized researchers.
- Provide a personal statement (of 500-1000 words) describing why they would like to take part in the research methods training; indicate whether they have ever written a research report or research paper and been involved in research data collection; Indicate your level of experience of analyzing data using software (e.g., STATA, EViews, R, Python or any other statistical/econometric software); and the skills you expect to get at the end of the technical workshop.
The Expressions of Interest, including the applicant’s curriculum vitae (CV) shall be addressed to the AERC Director of Research and submitted on or before 16 August 2024 by email to research@aercafrica.org and copy collaborative.research@aercafrica.org
Project Timelines
The breakdown of the timeline is as follows:
- 16 August 2024: Close of submissions.
- 30 August 2024: Applicants will be informed of the outcome of their Expressions of Interest.
- 16 -27 September 2024: Research Methods Workshop.