The African Network for the Economics of Learning, Innovation, and Competence Building Systems (AfricaLics) Secretariat is currently hosted by ACTS. AfricaLics has lined up a number of activities in order to achieve its objective of promoting the development of research capacity in Africa. These include regional based PhD Academies planned as part of the endevour to support the training of African Ph.D/Masters students engaged in research on Innovation and Technology Systems for Africa’s Development and stimulate their awareness of policy and management issues related to this field of research. These Academies aim to host students selected primarily from Africa and small number of students from the rest of the world.  It will be a regular event to take place each year in a different region in Africa. For more details about the next Academy and the call for students , please visit AfricaLics Website.  The facilitators of these Academies will be drawn from frontier researchers in innovation and development from around the world and will be expected to provide lectures and mentor the selected students.

The main objective of AfricaLics is to promote the development of research capacity in Africa with strong links to users – including policy makers and private sector. One long term aim is to enable Africa to become more self-sufficient in studying, monitoring and evaluating its innovation activities and systems through an evidence-based policy orientation for the betterment of society. The work of Africalics intends to complement the research and capacity building activities of other players in innovation studies both in the academic and policy arena.