Africa and Europe Moving Forward ‒ Evidence-based Solutions for African Development

How can Africa and Europe move forward together?

African economies face a number of critical challenges (e.g., limited employment opportunities, low quality of education), but also offer many opportunities (e.g., a young and motivated workforce, high entrepreneurial activity). Unfortunately, most indicators suggest that large parts of Africa are not on track to address the critical challenges and leverage the opportunities. Africa’s and Europe’s challenges are linked in multiple ways. Accordingly, we want to discuss how Africa and Europe can move forward together by jointly developing and using evidence-based solutions. Evidence-based solutions play an increasingly prominent role in “project-based” development cooperation. Yet, there is still a major knowing-doing gap. Further, policy-relevant evidence is often scarce in key areas, including employment creation, migration, trade, and investment policies.

Leuphana University and the GIGA are pleased to invite you to the three-day conference "Africa and Europe Moving Forward Together – Evidence-based Solutions for African Development.” The conference held from January 24 to January 26, 2019, will be the inaugural conference. The focus of the inaugural conference is on economy and employment.

African and European experts from academia and practice (civil society, science, private sector, politics) are invited to discuss current approaches, policies and interventions for African development. The conference fosters the exchange of ideas between science and practice to close the knowing-doing gap and to contribute to a more rigorous implementation of evidence-based solutions in a wider range of areas. The aim is to create an interdisciplinary platform to address the challenges of African development and European development cooperation by applying the logic of evidence-based management and policy.

We are honored that former President of Germany and former head of IMF, Dr Horst Köhler, appointed Director-General of the United Nations Office at Nairobi (UNON), Hanna S. Tetteh, and lead economist of the World Bank, Dr Markus P. Goldstein, will give the keynote speeches.

More information on the conference theme, on travel and accommodation as well as on the registration procedure.

Registration You can submit your registration on the event plattform XING. Find more information here. Do you want to attend the Africa Conference 2019? You can register here.

Contact In case you have any questions with regard to the Africa Conference, do not hesitate to contact us via: africa-conference@leuphana.de.