Where is the CSAE Conference 2027 being held?

The CSAE Conference 2027 will take place in the city of Oxford, GBR.

What is the primary focus of the CSAE Conference?

The conference focuses on African development and economics, bringing together experts to discuss and analyze economic issues relevant to the continent.

When does the CSAE Conference 2027 take place?

The conference is scheduled to run for a period of three days in March.

CSAE Conference 2027

Name: CSAE Conference 2027
Start: 2027-03-21T00:00:00Z
End: 2027-03-23T00:00:00Z
Location: Oxford

Mar 21–23, 2027Oxford, United KingdomIn-person

Registration open

The CSAE Conference is an international event focused on African development and economics. Hosted in Oxford, GBR, it serves as a crucial platform for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to engage with contemporary economic challenges and opportunities across the African continent. The conference aims to facilitate dialogue and disseminate research that can inform effective development strategies.

Committees & topics

Topics
Drivers of Long-Run Economic Growth and Development · Poverty Reduction Strategies in a Post-Pandemic World · Education and Human Capital Formation · Health and Public Policy in Developing Economies · Governance, Institutions, and Development Outcomes · Labor Markets, Employment, and Structural Change · Climate Change and Sustainable Development · Trade, Industrialization, and Global Value Chains

Why it matters

This conference is significant because it brings together a diverse group of stakeholders to address critical issues facing African economies. By focusing on rigorous economic research, it contributes to a deeper understanding of the complex factors influencing development, from macroeconomic stability to micro-level interventions. The discussions and presented papers often highlight innovative approaches and policy recommendations that can have tangible impacts on the livelihoods of millions.

Furthermore, the event's setting in GBR, a nation with a long-standing engagement in international development and a robust academic tradition, reinforces its role as a hub for intellectual exchange. The insights generated here can influence global development agendas and foster collaborations between African institutions and international partners. The emphasis on African development ensures that the unique contexts and priorities of the continent are at the forefront of the discourse, moving beyond generalized development paradigms.

How to prepare

To effectively engage with the CSAE Conference, participants should prepare by familiarizing themselves with current economic trends and policy debates concerning African nations. A strong understanding of key economic indicators, regional integration efforts, and the impact of global economic shifts on countries like NGA, ETH, ZAF, and KEN will be beneficial. Participants should also consider the historical context of development in Africa, including the legacies of colonialism and the evolution of international aid.

Delegates can enhance their participation by reviewing recent research papers from prominent development economists and institutions focusing on Africa. Preparing questions that challenge existing assumptions or propose alternative solutions can lead to more dynamic discussions. Understanding various engagement strategies will be crucial for networking and forming productive connections. Additionally, considering the perspectives of hidden stakeholders and employing stakeholder mapping techniques can enrich the understanding of the complex development landscape.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

United Kingdom

Host nation and significant contributor to development research and aid.

Role in topic

As the host country, GBR provides a prominent academic and research environment for the conference. Its universities and research institutions are key players in development economics, and it is a major donor country for development initiatives in Africa.

Nigeria

Major African economy, facing diverse development challenges and opportunities.

Role in topic

NGA, as Africa's largest economy and most populous nation, represents a critical case study for many development topics discussed at the conference, including economic diversification, poverty reduction, and governance.

Ethiopia

East African nation with significant development progress and ongoing challenges.

Role in topic

ETH often features in discussions on agricultural transformation, industrialization, and infrastructure development within the African context, offering insights into both successes and hurdles in development policy.

South Africa

Advanced African economy with unique challenges related to inequality and industrialization.

Role in topic

ZAF provides a perspective on development challenges in a more industrialized African setting, particularly concerning issues of inequality, labor markets, and regional economic integration within Southern Africa.

Kenya

East African economic hub, known for innovation and regional trade.

Role in topic

KEN is often highlighted for its advancements in technology, financial inclusion, and its role as a regional trade and logistics hub, offering valuable lessons on innovation-driven development in Africa.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Drivers of Long-Run Economic Growth and Development

Since the post-war emergence of development economics, scholars and policymakers have debated why some economies converge toward high incomes while others stagnate. Early models emphasized physical capital accumulation (Solow), giving way in the 1980s and 1990s to endogenous growth theories highlighting human capital, ideas, and institutions. The East Asian 'miracle' economies demonstrated that export-led industrialization, high savings, and state coordination could sustain decades of rapid catch-up, while many Sub-Saharan African and Latin American economies experienced 'lost decades' shaped by commodity dependence, debt crises, and structural adjustment. Today the development frontier is more fragmented. China's slowdown, the persistence of the middle-income trap, and weak productivity growth across much of the OECD have reopened questions about the sustainability of globalization-driven convergence. Climate transition costs, geoeconomic fragmentation, and AI-driven automation are reshaping comparative advantage, while the World Bank and IMF warn of a 'lost decade' for the poorest economies absent renewed investment in infrastructure, human capital, and macroeconomic stability. The core dispute is over the relative weight of policy levers — openness versus industrial policy, state versus market, structural transformation versus services-led growth — and how the international system should support late developers facing both fiscal constraints and a narrower carbon budget.

Key players

Poverty Reduction Strategies in a Post-Pandemic World

Global extreme poverty fell from roughly 38% of the world population in 1990 to under 10% by 2019, driven largely by growth in China, India, and other Asian economies. The World Bank and UN consolidated this progress around the Millennium Development Goals and, from 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals, which set ending extreme poverty by 2030 as SDG 1. Strategies evolved from purely growth-centric approaches toward targeted interventions: conditional cash transfers pioneered in Brazil and Mexico, social pensions in Southern Africa, and rural employment guarantees in India. The COVID-19 shock reversed years of progress, pushing an estimated 70-90 million people back into extreme poverty, with subsequent food and energy price spikes following Russia's invasion of Ukraine compounding the setback. The World Bank now projects the 2030 SDG 1 target will be missed by a wide margin, with poverty increasingly concentrated in fragile and conflict-affected states, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. The contemporary debate centers on whether universal social protection floors, cash-based humanitarian assistance, graduation programs (à la BRAC), or renewed structural transformation deliver the largest poverty impact per dollar, and how to finance them amid sovereign debt distress and shrinking aid budgets.

Key players

Education and Human Capital Formation

Human capital theory, developed by Schultz, Becker, and Mincer in the 1960s, established education as a central engine of growth and individual welfare. Mass schooling expanded dramatically after 1990, and the MDG and SDG 4 agendas pushed near-universal primary enrollment in most regions. Yet the 2018 World Development Report introduced the concept of a global 'learning crisis,' noting that enrollment gains had not translated into learning: more than half of children in low- and middle-income countries could not read a simple text by age 10. The COVID-19 school closures — among the longest in Latin America and South Asia — deepened this crisis, with UNESCO and the World Bank estimating significant losses in lifetime earnings for affected cohorts. At the same time, demographic divergence is reshaping the agenda: aging societies in East Asia and Europe focus on adult retraining and tertiary quality, while youth-bulge economies in Africa face acute pressure to expand secondary education and align it with labor markets. Current debates revolve around foundational literacy and numeracy programs (e.g., 'teaching at the right level'), the role of edtech and AI tutors, financing gaps under tightening fiscal space, and how to value early childhood investments whose returns accrue over decades.

Key players

Health and Public Policy in Developing Economies

The Alma-Ata Declaration of 1978 framed primary health care as the foundation of universal access, but the 1980s debt crises and structural adjustment narrowed health spending in many low-income countries. The creation of the Global Fund (2002) and Gavi (2000), alongside MDG-era campaigns against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, drove dramatic declines in child and maternal mortality. SDG 3 broadened the agenda toward universal health coverage (UHC) and non-communicable diseases (NCDs). COVID-19 exposed deep inequities in pandemic response, particularly around vaccine access, and motivated the WHO Pandemic Agreement adopted in 2025. Simultaneously, NCDs — cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancers, mental health conditions — now account for the majority of deaths in middle-income countries, requiring health systems built for acute infectious disease to pivot toward chronic care. Climate change adds new burdens through heat, vector-borne disease, and food insecurity. The policy debate concerns how to finance UHC under fiscal stress, how to retain health workers amid global migration, and how to translate evidence from RCTs (on insurance design, conditional incentives, community health workers) into durable public systems.

Key players

Governance, Institutions, and Development Outcomes

Institutional economics, advanced by North, Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson, posits that the rules of the game — secure property rights, constraints on executive power, accountable bureaucracies — determine why some nations prosper. Empirical work using colonial origins, ethnic fractionalization, and natural experiments has linked 'inclusive' institutions to long-run prosperity, while 'extractive' arrangements perpetuate stagnation. The 2024 Nobel Prize reaffirmed institutions as a central explanatory variable in development. In practice, the post-Cold War wave of democratization stalled in the 2010s, and Freedom House and V-Dem report nearly two decades of democratic backsliding. Corruption, state capture, and conflict continue to undermine service delivery in numerous fragile states, while the rise of China has offered an alternative model emphasizing state capacity over political pluralism. Donor approaches have shifted from one-size-fits-all 'good governance' templates toward 'thinking and working politically' and problem-driven iterative adaptation. Key disputes include whether democracy is a precondition or a consequence of growth, the effectiveness of anti-corruption interventions, how to build state capacity in low-income settings, and what role external actors can legitimately play in shaping domestic institutions.

Key players

Labor Markets, Employment, and Structural Change

Arthur Lewis's dual-sector model framed development as the reallocation of labor from low-productivity agriculture to higher-productivity industry. East Asia followed that path closely; much of Africa and Latin America has instead seen 'premature deindustrialization' (Rodrik), with workers moving from agriculture into informal services rather than manufacturing. The informal sector still accounts for the majority of employment in low-income countries, limiting tax bases, social protection coverage, and productivity growth. Global labor markets are now being reshaped by three forces: demographic transitions (aging in East Asia and Europe, youth bulges in Africa), technological change including AI and automation that threatens routine cognitive work, and the green transition's reallocation of jobs across sectors. The ILO estimates that hundreds of millions of new jobs must be created over the coming decade simply to absorb new African and South Asian entrants, while OECD economies wrestle with labor shortages and migration politics. Debates focus on the role of active labor market policies, minimum wages, gig-economy regulation, skills and apprenticeship systems, and whether industrial policy can still create mass formal-sector employment in late-developing economies.

Key players

Climate Change and Sustainable Development

Since the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the global regime has progressively shifted from differentiated Annex I obligations under the Kyoto Protocol toward the universal but nationally determined architecture of the 2015 Paris Agreement. The IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report (2021-2023) concluded that limiting warming to 1.5°C requires near-halving of global emissions by 2030 — a trajectory current NDCs do not meet. COP28 in Dubai produced the first explicit call to transition away from fossil fuels, and COP29 in Baku set a new climate finance goal of USD 300 billion per year by 2035, which developing countries deemed inadequate. For developing economies, the challenge is twofold: adapting to intensifying climate impacts that disproportionately affect low-latitude and low-income regions, and financing a low-carbon development path without recourse to the cheap fossil energy used by today's high-income economies. The Loss and Damage Fund, operationalized at COP28, remains underfunded. Debt-climate-nature swaps, carbon markets under Paris Article 6, and green industrial policy are emerging as central instruments. The core dispute pits historical responsibility and equity claims from the Global South against major emitters' demands for universal mitigation action, while questions of just transition and competitiveness (notably the EU's CBAM) intensify trade-climate tensions.

Key players

Trade, Industrialization, and Global Value Chains

The post-WWII trading order built around the GATT and, since 1995, the WTO presided over an extraordinary expansion of global trade, with developing-country shares of manufactured exports rising sharply. The 'second unbundling' from the 1990s onward — the fragmentation of production into global value chains — enabled rapid industrialization in China, Vietnam, and parts of Eastern Europe. Yet the Doha Round collapsed, and the WTO's dispute settlement system has been weakened since 2019 by the blockage of Appellate Body appointments. The 2010s and 2020s have seen a turn toward strategic trade policy: U.S.-China tariff disputes, the CHIPS and Inflation Reduction Acts, EU green and digital regulations including CBAM, and widespread embrace of industrial policy. COVID-19 and the Ukraine war accelerated 'derisking,' nearshoring, and friend-shoring, with mixed implications for developing economies. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), operational since 2021, offers a counterweight by promoting intra-African industrialization. The central debate is whether late-developing economies still have a viable manufacturing-led growth path, what mix of industrial policy and openness best supports structural transformation, and how to reconcile climate-driven trade measures with WTO principles and development needs.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for CSAE Conference 2027.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

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Trump's Legal Battles Impact 2026 Elections

Trump's Economic Reset

Mifepristone Ruling Sparks 2026 Political Tug

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Hidden Stakeholders

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Policy Brief Writing

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Conflict Resolution

United Kingdom March 2027

By committee

Frequently asked questions

CSAE Conference 2027

Mar 21–23, 2027Oxford, United KingdomIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Drivers of Long-Run Economic Growth and Development · Poverty Reduction Strategies in a Post-Pandemic World · Education and Human Capital Formation · Health and Public Policy in Developing Economies · Governance, Institutions, and Development Outcomes · Labor Markets, Employment, and Structural Change · Climate Change and Sustainable Development · Trade, Industrialization, and Global Value Chains

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

United Kingdom

Host nation and significant contributor to development research and aid.

Role in topic

Nigeria

Major African economy, facing diverse development challenges and opportunities.

Role in topic

Ethiopia

East African nation with significant development progress and ongoing challenges.

Role in topic

South Africa

Advanced African economy with unique challenges related to inequality and industrialization.

Role in topic

Kenya

East African economic hub, known for innovation and regional trade.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Drivers of Long-Run Economic Growth and Development

Key players

Poverty Reduction Strategies in a Post-Pandemic World

Key players

Education and Human Capital Formation

Key players

Health and Public Policy in Developing Economies

Key players

Governance, Institutions, and Development Outcomes

Key players

Labor Markets, Employment, and Structural Change

Key players

Climate Change and Sustainable Development

Key players

Trade, Industrialization, and Global Value Chains

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for CSAE Conference 2027.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

US Job Openings at 6.7M

Trump's Legal Battles Impact 2026 Elections

Trump's Economic Reset

Mifepristone Ruling Sparks 2026 Political Tug

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Hidden Stakeholders

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Policy Brief Writing

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Conflict Resolution

United Kingdom March 2027

By committee

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

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Frequently asked questions

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

RUSI Latin American Security Conference 2026

Link India Strategic Dialogue on Bangladesh Elections 2026

UK Trade Policy Forum 2026

Colombia’s armed conflict in regional and global context: Peace prospects, Venezuela spill over, and geopolitics ahead of elections

Meeting on “Transatlantic Security Amid Geopolitical Fluctuations”

Security and Resilience

Frequently asked questions