African Economic Research Consortium

The African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) has been conducting a multiyear research effort on the political economy and institutional structure of data policy and governance in Africa. The research is anchored around five themes: (a) benchmarking Africa against global best practice; (b) identifying institutional structures for data policy and governance; (c) exploring data interoperability in Africa; (d) exploring gaps, priorities, and opportunities in the digital revolution in Africa; and (e) strengthening a policymaking culture of data centricity and governance in Africa. This supplemental grant will allow AERC to hold a capstone Regional Policy Forum in early 2024. The goal of the forum will be to enhance uptake of evidence generated from the research effort by facilitating intensive dialogue, debate, and peer learning between senior African policymakers working on data and their researcher counterparts. (Strategy: Evidence-Informed Policymaking)

The African Economic Research Consortium supports economic scholarship and collaboration across Africa to bring rigor and evidence to economic policymaking, and to strengthen local capacity for conducting independent research on problems pertinent to the management of African economies. This grant renews support to an emerging consortium scoping a new line of research and policy engagement on data governance, with the aim of positioning Africa’s leading economic scholars to contribute to ongoing debates about data governance. This grant is a renewal within a cluster of grants under the Evidence-Informed Policymaking strategy to strengthen a field of African institutions working on data governance. The goal of this cluster is to help governments in East and West Africa develop policy frameworks that balance public good uses of data with data privacy and protection.