KIT materialises the newly established partnership with AKADEMIYA2063
AKADEMIYA2063, AGRA and KIT Royal Tropical Institute launched their first joint training course on Impact Evaluation in Kigali in December 2023.
This 5-day course involved staff from the three organizations and members of the African Growth and Development Policy (AGRODEP) Modeling Consortium.
“This was not a conventional training course on impact evaluation, but rather a true learning experience for professionals. There was hardly any distinction between teacher and student, or between trainers and trainees. All training activities were geared towards one specific objective: to collectively produce evidence-based and policy-oriented research”, according to a young economist participating in the course.
Equitable partnerships
By co-organising the training, KIT is walking the talk on equitable partnerships. Late 2022 KIT signed a MoU as part of a research partnership with Akademiya2063 to reactivate the AGRODEP Modeling Consortium after the COVID crisis. Together we’ll help to further institutionalise AGRODEP into a fully-fledged and Africa-based school for early and mid-career development economists working in Africa.
Overall, AGRODEP facilitates the use of statistical, econometric and economic modeling tools, promotes access to data sources, provides training, research grants, as well as networking and publication opportunities to its members. AGRODEP consists of a membership-based network of about 300 African researchers, led by AKADEMIYA2063 and supported by organisations like KIT and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). The overarching goal of AGRODEP is to enable and support African researchers in influencing policy debates on agri-food systems below the Sahara.
Panel data
In 2019 and then again in 2021 KIT collected geo-referenced panel data on about 12,000 farm-households from 7 sub-Saharan countries, on behalf of AGRA and its PIATA program (Partnership for Inclusive Agricultural Transformation in Africa). However, until now neither KIT nor AGRA managed to produce any analysis using the rich and unique dataset, while the data has the potential to provide key insights into the factors determining the resilience and vulnerability of sub-Saharan farm-households during the COVID crisis.
AKADEMIYA2063 therefore teamed up with KIT and AGRA to organise this first AGRODEP training course to bring together promising African researchers, enable them to build on each other’s capacities, and to collectively produce some flagship publications based on the PIATA panel dataset.
About
- AKADEMIYA2063 is an African based non-profit research organization with its headquarters in Kigali, Rwanda. AKADEMIYA2063’s mission is support the African Union Agenda 2063.
- AGRA is an African institution promoting sustainable transformation African food systems across the continent.
