The Quality of Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa Workshop of the JICA-IPD Task Force on Africa

This workshop focuses on the quality of growth in Africa (South of the Sahara) on June 7-8 at Columbia University, New York. The broad themes that we aim to focus on are indicated below, they will be narrowed down to tractable topics in the light of the interests and availability of invited participants and your suggestions, especially on what interests you, are welcome:

Inequality (including placing Africa in the global context)

Climate Change (Africa Post COP 21)

Sustaining Growth and transformation (after the commodity boom)

Employment

Urbanization

Priorities for SDGs and related metrics/measurements

Global rules and Africa (e.g. taxation of multinationals, trade and investment agreements, renegotiating extractive contracts)

The meeting in June is the first one of a task force established by the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD) at Columbia University, jointly with Japan’s International Cooperation Agency (JICA). IPD Co-president Joseph Stiglitz will co-chair the task force along with Ravi Kanbur and Akbar Noman. (IPD task forces bring together academics, policy makers and analysts with the aim of enhancing the quality of policy dialogue in developing countries on key economic issues. This is the first workshop on this topic for the new JICA/IPD research project followed by years of collaborative effort between IPD and JICA.