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African Economic Research Consortium Annual Conference – Call for Abstracts

February 15, 2023
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ACET is hosting an invited session at the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) Annual Conference in Nairobi scheduled for June 1-3, 2023. The theme is:
The Resilience, Growth, and Transformation Nexus in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities in Building Forward Better 

ACET believes that economic growth alone is not enough to secure Africa’s future. To ensure inclusive and sustainable development, African countries must transform their economies and move away from their dependence on primary commodities and natural endowments. ACET defines economic transformation for Africa as “Growth with DEPTH,” which is shorthand for Diversification, Export competitiveness, Productivity increases, and Technological upgrading—all to improve Human well-being through better jobs and livelihoods. ACET’s position is that an economy that is not transformed is not wealthy. Until an economy is transformed, and the outcome of its transformation has a positive impact on human well-being, that economy is not wealthy; it is simply endowed.

However, growth with DEPTH faces both economic and non-economic risks that are highly integrated, involving trade-offs and synergies. While resilience against economic risks and their respective pass-through effects are well known, resilience against non-economic risks has not received equal attention in African research and policy formulation, despite non-economic risks currently being at the forefront of global policy discourse.

Economic risks are expected (or sometimes unexpected) adverse economic conditions that cause outcomes to deviate from forecasts or budgets. Non-economic risks refer to other external factors that can cause deviations including health shocks, such as Ebola and malaria outbreaks or the COVID-19 pandemic, and climate-related phenomena, such as cyclones in southern Africa, swarms of locusts in east Africa, and extreme heat and drought in the Sahel region and the Horn of Africa. Each of these shocks lead to growth reversals, increased poverty and inequality, destroyed infrastructure, disease, hunger, and food insecurity—all of which prevent countries from building wealth through economic transformation.

The continent is also experiencing a surge in religious fanaticism and political instability with democratically elected governments being overthrown by the military. And geopolitical conflicts such as the Russia-Ukraine war have had negative impacts on global food and energy prices, especially in Africa. Economic risks and non-economic risks are not mutually exclusive; there is a bi-causal relationship between the two, and they impact each other.

This call invites papers from policymakers, disaster specialists, development practitioners, and researchers and scholars from across academia, think tanks, civil society, humanitarian organizations, and the private sector on how African economies should build resilience against non-economic risks that lead to reversals in transformation and human well-being. The focus should be on resilience against three main types of non-economic risks: COVID-19 and other health shocks, climate change phenomena, and political instability.

A nexus approach is recommended to explore the interrelationships between resilience against non-economic risks, economic growth, and economic transformation, including the trade-offs and synergies between the three concepts, the challenges that need to be addressed to sustain inclusive growth, and the opportunities available to African economies to “build forward better” in the process.

Resilience can be viewed as a status or as a process. As a status, resilience broadly refers to a country’s ability to withstand and quickly recover from a shock. ACET research has shown that the more transformed an economy is the more resilient it is to negative shocks. On the contrary, the less transformed an economy is, the weaker and more vulnerable it is to persistent negative shocks and their pass-through effects on growth, employment, social outcomes, and social cohesion. As a process, resilience may be seen as a continuum along four key dimensions: (i) resistance against unwanted change, thereby ensuring stability; (ii) coping, which relates to absorption capabilities of the economy; (iii) flexibility, which ensures adaptation to change and altered expectations, and (iv) transformation, which relates to changing the underlying structure of economic systems.

The primary focus of this session will be on the experiences of countries in building forward better post-crisis—either in the context of COVID-19, climate phenomena, or conflict. The session will explore what policies or strategies did or did not work and share lessons learned on how resilience to non-economic risks can be enhanced. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed opportunities to build forward better in pharmaceutical manufacturing. Other opportunities exist with technological upgrades and systemic and infrastructure improvements, which ultimately enhance a country’s resilience to non-economic shocks.

SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS

Abstracts of maximum 250 words are invited in the following areas:

  • Resilience against health shocks, their socio-economic pass-through effects, and impact on growth and transformation
  • The nexus between natural disasters, growth, and transformation, and the impact on wealth creation on the continent
  • Resilience against geopolitical conflicts, political instability, and the impact on wealth creation on the continent.

Specific examples and country/regional case studies across the African continent are preferred to foster knowledge sharing.

Abstracts and enquiries should be sent to:

[email protected] and [email protected]

TIME FRAME

  • Deadline for submitting abstracts: February 28, 2023
  • Feedback on submitted abstracts: March 15, 2023
  • Deadline for submission of full papers: April 15, 2023
  • Feedback on full papers: May 15, 2023
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