Monday 17^th and Tuesday 18^th of February 2020/ German Development Institute, Bonne, Germany

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is the only region where the number of poor people is still rising. The vast majority of the workforce is employed informally and under precarious conditions. While many Asian countries have shown that such conditions can be overcome, the potential drivers for such structural transformation in SSA are still unclear. At the same time, international conditions for economic development are undergoing radical changes.

The two-day conference will combine keynote speeches offering various perspectives with expert sessions focusing on specific game changing trends. Following the eight expert sessions, two panel discussions will be held:

1. the first aims to integrate findings from the expert sessions and attempts to identify some overall lessons for Africa’s structural transformation ahead.
2. The second addresses implications for governance. The key assumption is that different pathways of economic development correspond to specific governance patterns; thus, if economic transformation changes direction, so do mechanisms of accountability, participation etc.

Following these panels, representatives of the Economic Commission for Africa, BMZ and DEVCO will highlight important outcomes for international cooperation, especially what implications emerge for the AU-EU partnership.

The conference is organized jointly by DIE with the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET), the Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings Institution, the Center for Development Research at University of Bonn (ZEF), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa as well as the international research and think tank networks GRECEST, Malabo-Montpellier Panel, PEGNet and T20 Africa.

Full programme here