How to Make African Economic Lions: Tapping Africa’s Growth and Poverty Reduction Potentials
in cooperation with PEP - Partnership for Economic Policy
at Pullman Teranga Hotel, Dakar, Senegal,
September 6-7 2012
Conference website
The Poverty Reduction, Equity, and Growth Network’s (PEGNet) conference 2012 on „How to Make African Economic Lions: Tapping Africa’s Growth and Poverty Reduction Potentials“ will be held in Dakar in cooperation with (PEP) Partnership for Economic Policy hosted in Africa by the Consortium pour la Recherche Economique et Sociale (CRES) September 6-7, 2012.
The registration is now open. Please use the registration form provided on the Conference website.
Conference format
The conference will provide a platform for high-level dialogue between development researchers, practitioners and policy-makers. The two conference days will feature parallel sessions based on invited and contributed papers as well as project presentations. These sessions will be complemented by a debate, a round-table discussion, and keynote speeches by renowned speakers from academia, economic policy and development practice. Confirmed speakers include Augustin K. Fosu (WIDER) for the main keynote, Hosaena Ghebru Hagos (IFPRI) for the young professional keynote and Mwangi S. Kimenyi (Brookings Institution) and Christian Wessels (Roland Berger Strategy Consultants) for the debate. In addition, the PEGNet Best Practice Award will be awarded for the fourth time to best practices in cooperation between researchers and practitioners. While plenary sessions will focus on the conference theme, parallel sessions and Best Practice Award projects are open to all topics surrounding PEGNet‘s core theme, i.e. the nexus between poverty, equity, and growth.
Conference theme
There seems to be dynamism and drive in Africa. The continent’s average growth is almost five times the Euro zone average growth and some of the world’s fastest growing economies are in Sub Saharan Africa. Some observers believe that Africa will play an increasingly important role in the global economy while others raise critical questions on how sustainable the current development is. Yet, the sources of Africa’s increased economic momentum and likely staying power are not well understood. Is the acceleration in growth a sign of hard-earned progress or the result of a commodity boom? How will Africa’s long-term growth reflect interrelated social and demographic changes, such as the rise of the African urban consumer? Will the lack of a strong manufacturing base hinder long-term growth prospects? How important is the private sector in achieving broad-based growth?
Taking an African perspective, the conference will discuss scientific results and practical experiences on a number of channels through which public policy, private economic activity, aid, and social and demographic developments have an impact on development.
Paper Submissions
The submission process has closed on April 10. The call for papers is available here
Call for papers and projects in English (pdf) and in French.
Organisers
The conference is co-organised by the Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP), the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), the Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on behalf of the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the OECD Development Centre and supported by the Senegalese Government, the KfW Development Bank, and the Courant Poverty Research Centre at the University of Göttingen.
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Media partner: 
Video of 2011 PEGNet conference in Hamburg:
