AERC Funding for Masters and PhD Study in Economics

What AERC's collaborative programs do

The African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) does not run its own university. Instead, it links economics departments across the continent into two shared training tracks, the Collaborative Masters Programme (CMAP) and the Collaborative PhD Programme (CPP), so students get a Masters or PhD from their home university while sharing a common curriculum and teaching pool with students from other African countries.

CMAP runs across 26 public universities in 21 Sub-Saharan African countries . Each participating university teaches its own core courses in macroeconomics, microeconomics and quantitative methods, using a shared syllabus AERC helped design so that a Masters from one CMAP university lines up with a Masters from another.

How the Joint Facility for Electives works

Universities with strong teaching and thesis supervision capacity, known as Category B universities, send their CMAP students to a shared teaching hub in Nairobi called the Joint Facility for Electives (JFE) for a block of elective courses, taught by African scholars alongside international experts. This block typically runs for about three months during the middle of the academic year. CPP doctoral students attend a similar elective block at the JFE during their second year of study.

The JFE model exists because no single African economics department can staff every specialist elective on its own. Pooling students from dozens of universities into one teaching hub lets AERC bring in specialist instructors that a single department could not justify hiring for a handful of students.

The Collaborative PhD Programme structure

The CPP is a four-year post-Masters doctoral program combining coursework, examinations and a thesis. You enter with a Masters in economics, usually from a CMAP university or an equivalent program, then spend your first year on advanced coursework at your host university before the second-year elective block at the JFE. The remaining years focus on your dissertation research under supervision at your home institution, with AERC providing periodic research workshops and thesis-writing support along the way.

Who should apply

CMAP and CPP suit students who want a research-oriented economics degree with exposure to a wider network of African economists rather than a narrowly national program. Because entry runs through your chosen university's own admissions process first, you apply to a specific CMAP or CPP university the same way you would apply to any other Masters or PhD program, then that university enrolls you into the shared AERC curriculum once admitted.

Funding varies by university and by AERC's own grant cycle in a given year, so confirm current scholarship or fee-waiver terms directly with your chosen department's economics office rather than assuming a fixed AERC stipend applies everywhere. Some universities bundle a living stipend into the offer, others expect you to secure your own funding for a self-sponsored place.

Where the network operates

Participating universities span West, East, Central and Southern Africa, giving you a choice of host country and language of instruction within the network. Checking a university's current CMAP or CPP status directly with its economics department before applying is worth the extra step, since AERC periodically reviews and updates which universities hold Category A or Category B standing.

After the degree

Graduates from CMAP and CPP typically move into central banks, finance ministries, research institutes and university economics departments across the region, since the shared curriculum aims to build a pipeline of policy-ready economists trained to a common standard. AERC also runs separate research grant competitions for graduates who want funding for policy research after they finish, distinct from the CMAP and CPP scholarships covered here.