Kiel Institute Africa Initiative
Africa is currently featuring strongly in the German and European public debate. The political interest in the continent is partly driven by the fear that population growth and global warming will lead to enormous migration pressure from Africa as they lead to a severe lack of productive employment opportunities for the youth. The countermeasures that are currently discussed and partly already implemented in Europe range from more restrictive immigration policies to a scaling-up of foreign aid as a means to tackle the root causes of migration. At the same time, there are increasingly more optimistic voices. They point to the high African growth rates in the 2000s and regard them as a sign of a large economic potential in terms of rising trade and investment opportunities. Africa has also started to play a more important geoeconomic role, for instance as a potential supplier of critical raw materials.
Against this background, the Kiel Institute Africa Initiative aims to foster research on African economic development.. For this purpose, we maintain a network of experts mainly from economics and political science, who exchange research findings, work on joint research projects, and engage in a dialogue with policymakers and the general public. The focus is on Africa-Europe relations. An example of this approach is the project “Megatrends Africa”, which we initiated jointly with the German Institute for International Affairs (SWP) and IDOS, and which is interdepartmentally funded by the German Federal Foreign Office (AA), the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF), the Federal Ministry of Defence (BMVg), the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR), the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE). In this project, we investigate, for example, how Africa’s rising financing needs can be met as official development budgets are shrinking.
To increase visibility of the Africa-related research and deepen the network internationally – including in Africa - we organize the annual Kiel-CEPR African Economic Development Conference.
Director
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Africa Monitor
The Africa Monitor is a joint effort of the research center for International Development and the Kiel Institute's Africa Initiative, to build an interactive platform that tracks leading economic indicators for 55 African economies, and to provides economic analysis as well as analytical tools to monitor economic developments in Africa. The monitor consists of several building blocks accessible through the website.
