Senior policy makers from across Africa will congregate to debate one of Africa’s most topical subjects today – Agriculture in Africa’s Transformation: The Role of Smallholder Farmers. The two days of intense deliberations during the seventeenth Senior Policy Seminar (SPS XVII) will mainly focus on policy issues.
The seminar will discuss the evidence and approaches that will drive policy change in support of smallholder agriculture in Africa. Additionally, the choice of the topic is timely and aims to equip African policy makers in decision making using up-to-date research findings.
The AERC Senior Policy Seminar provides an opportunity for policy makers and researchers to engage in uninterrupted deliberations on a set of important issues considered significant to policy. The seminar format insulates the policy makers from pressures related to their responsibilities and therefore creates an environment for lively professional discourse on the selected issue. These seminars are designed specifically to bring together senior policy makers from sub-Saharan African countries to exchange experiences and deliberate on topical issues pertaining to sustainable development of their economies. Participants in these seminars are drawn from the highest levels of government, including the presidency, ministers, governors of central banks, heads of civil services, permanent secretaries and heads of government agencies and parastatals.
Besides the specific aims of bringing researchers and policy makers together, the seminars are directly useful to AERC, because they help to identify possible areas of policy-oriented research for AERC network researchers to consider. They also improve prospects for policy involvement of these researchers and enhance AERC’s visibility in the policy community. Thus, they serve to highlight the growing capacity in the region for policy research and, on the whole, provide important feedback to AERC on its research for future improvement.
- This event has passed.