The very first African Think Tank Studies are set to take place in Pretoria on the 3-5 Feburary which is brought to us cutesy of The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), Institute for Security Studies (ISS) and the University of Pennsylvania.
The Summit will be held under the University of Pennsylvania’s Think Tank and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP), with the aim to provide a regional forum to engage and discuss challenging policy and organizational issues facing think tanks in Africa.
The summit’s main focus will be the policy level and institutional issues; they will tackle the national and regional policies, programs and strategies that address the current and emerging security threats for the continent and opportunities for Africa to become a major global trade and investment partner. On the institutional issues, the summit will deal with the long-term sustainability of think tanks and the sharing of best practices for research and resource mobilization.
ACBF has vast experience in the establishment of think tanks in Africa, currently supporting 29 policy think tanks in 22 countries. Central to this support has been the conviction that policy analysis and research are critical to economic management, thereby leading to improving public policy for growth, equity, employment and poverty reduction.
ACBF has achieved three main results, namely limited policy reversal on the continent, equipping governments with relevant skills for economic policy analysis and improving policy planning and monitoring for development frameworks such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
It is hoped that the First African Think Tank Summit will establish learning alliances between African and global think tanks including the development of a ranking baseline which ACBF supported Think tanks can utilize to improve performance and maximize impact.
