Experts push for community-led economic research to drive Africa’s policies
At AERC’s 2025 Nairobi summit, African economists and Kenyan officials urged community-led, locally grounded research and data systems to better inform policies and measure real development impact.
Africa’s leading policy thinkers have raised concerns over long-standing gaps between economic research and its translation into real development outcomes.
Meeting in Nairobi during the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC)’s 2025 annual summit, they called for a reset in how evidence is generated, localised and integrated into policymaking.
They also stressed the importance of research that responds directly to community realities and policy needs.
The summit additionally marked the launch of AERC’s ten-year (2025–2035) strategy, which aims to deepen policy engagement and ensure African perspectives shape both regional and global economic discourse.
Alignment to local conditions
AERC Executive Director Victor Murinde noted that disconnects often arise when research is implemented without sufficient alignment to the local conditions it is meant to address. He said the organisation’s new strategic direction places strong emphasis on co-producing knowledge with governments and communities.
“Strategic partnerships, to work with the local communities, are the first important thing. So we will be co-producing knowledge that is demand-driven and meets local conditions,” Murinde said.
He added that value-chain research, for example, must reflect how grassroots producers operate both within the country and across the continent, and how those insights can strengthen intra-African markets.
Beyond producing findings, AERC stressed the need to measure success through policy uptake and institutional behavioural change.
“We must endeavour to measure the impact of our research in terms of uptake into policy and practice.”
The Kenyan government echoed these concerns, warning that research loses relevance when it fails to reflect ground-level data and citizen experiences.
State Department for Economic Planning Principal Secretary Bonface Barasa Makokha said the country is restructuring how evidence is gathered and used in planning.
“Our slogan is data-driven, people-focused and result-oriented, and already we have an initiative training the grassroots on data collection and reporting,” Makokha said.
Training in research methods
He explained that training community health promoters, chiefs, village elders and administrative officers in research methods will help align national statistics with on-the-ground realities. This localisation effort is set for official rollout in January, targeting persistent mismatches between national reporting and community-level outcomes.
PS Makokha also highlighted the use of citizen-generated content through the “#UchumiVibes” initiative, which encourages youth to document development issues using short videos.
Both AERC and government representatives emphasised that the core problem is not a lack of research, but the inadequate translation of insights into actionable reforms.
The government hopes that stronger monitoring and evaluation—anchored in grassroots reporting—will improve real-time assessment of development projects and ensure closer alignment between planned outputs and lived impact.
Discussions at the summit further stressed that Africa’s development challenges demand homegrown research approaches tailored to the continent’s evolving priorities.
Indigenous knowledge systems
In a speech delivered by the PS, National Treasury CS John Mbadi urged policymakers to reclaim Africa’s economic narrative by grounding decisions in indigenous knowledge systems rather than external prescriptions. He challenged delegates to champion self-reliance, innovation and policy independence across sectors.
AERC noted that its new 10-year Strategic Plan (2025–2035) seeks to embed this shift by reinforcing research excellence, mentorship and capacity building to nurture a new generation of African economists. The strategy also aims to strengthen policy engagement across governments, central banks, private sector players and development partners.
At the summit, AERC unveiled the African Private Sector Platform (APSP), a new initiative designed to deepen collaboration between AERC researchers and the continent’s private sector. The platform is expected to advance evidence-based private sector development policies.
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