PEGNet 2012 - PEGNet Conference 2012

How to Make African Economic Lions: Tapping Africa’s Growth and Poverty Reduction Potentials
PEP research network, Dakar, Senegal,
September 6-7 2012
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 the Poverty and Economic Policy (PEP) research network hosted in Africa by the Consortium pour la Recherche Economique et Sociale (CRES) September 6-7, 2012.
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 and Hosaena Ghebru Hagos (IFPRI) for the young professional keynote. 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
Papers should be submitted by email to pegnet-AT-ifw-kiel.de in a pdf or Word file, indicating ‘PEGNet Conference 2012’ in the subject heading. The selection will be made on the basis of papers or abstracts of not less than 400 words. Only abstracts and papers written in English language will be accepted. Priority will be given to empirical research with clear implications for policy design and implementation. Furthermore, we encourage practitioners to present case studies and/or share their experiences from the field.
Best Practice Award
We also ask for submissions of projects, programs, and initiatives for the PEGNet Best Practice Award. This award will be granted to programmes or projects that have achieved effective interaction between research and practice. All initiatives that have proved to put research into action and have thereby fostered cooperation between development research and practice are encouraged to apply. Such initiatives can be development projects or programmes that have incorporated research tools into their design or research projects that have been particularly successful in translating their findings into policy and practice. Initiatives targeted at improving dialogue between researchers and practitioners are also encouraged to apply. The proposed projects do not necessarily have to be closely related to this year’s conference theme, yet a geographical focus on Africa is advantageous.
Projects should be submitted by email to pegnet-AT-ifw-kiel.de in a pdf or Word file, indicating ‘PEGNet Conference 2012’ in the subject heading.
For the Best Practice Award, a maximum of three projects will be selected by a committee on the basis of a three-page summary of the initiative’s objectives, the type of interaction between research and practice as well as its results. The preselected projects will be asked to submit one additional paper or report. At the conference, each nominated initiative will be presented and the winner of a prize of Euro 3000 will be selected by the committee.
For more information on PEGNet and the conference please refer to www.pegnet.ifw-kiel.de.
Deadlines
The submission deadline for papers and Best Practice projects is April 10, 2012. Notification of acceptance will be sent out in May 2012. The deadline for full papers and additional material for the Best Practice Award is July 15, 2012.
Organisers
The conference is co-organised by the Poverty and Economic Policy (PEP) research network, 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) and supported by the OECD Development Centre, the Senegalese Government, the KfW Development Bank, and the Courant Poverty Research Centre at the University of Göttingen.