The first-ever African Think Tank Summit, organized by a Penn group, brought substantial results that are currently being implemented across the continent.
Penn’s Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program organized the first ever continental think tank conference in partnership with the Africa Building Capacity Foundation in early February.
Perhaps most significantly, the conference produced plans for annual think tank meetings and the establishment of a Pan-African Think Tank Network.
“Their collective voice and collective efforts are what’s needed to mobilize resources,” Director of TTCSP James McGann said.
Plans are also being made for a think tank cooperative, which will share resources between African think tanks in staff recruitment and make joint purchases of computer hardware.
The conference also produced plans for the creation of a media and public engagement training program and an Africa Media Network to communicate think tank news and connect further with the African population. Discussions also brought forward new strategies to engage private funding resources.
The results “far exceeded my expectations,” McGann said, explaining that Africa both has greater needs than other continents and a very different starting point from which to work.
Over 45 of the leading think tanks in Africa participated in the productive discussion in Pretoria, South Africa, between Feb. 3 and Feb. 5.
McGann described the event as a “landmark conference.” It was both the first of its kind and produced “groundbreaking recommendations,” which “will have a far reaching impact,” he explained.
TTCSP Global Summit Intern Coordinator Erin McCabe , a graduate student in the School of Social Policy & Practice, said a key feature of the summit was “a unifying desire to come up with a concrete network.”
“People really connected with each other,” she added.
TTCSP, which releases the annual Go To Think Tank Index Report - the most comprehensive universal rankings of global think tanks - “cataly[zed]” the conference. However, the think tanks are “taking the lead,” McGann said.
Hussein El-Kamel , senior advisor at the International Corporation of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, appreciated the pragmatism of the summit.
“I was happy that this Summit meeting would not be like many other conferences that give recommendations and [do] not turn them into working plans,” he said in an email.
Frannie Léautier, partner and CEO of Mkoba Private Equity, a fund for supporting small and medium enterprises in Africa, said in an email that the summit combined “the best of collaboration and competition for effective results.”
The work of TTCSP is “a real product for engaging in dialogue and transformation Africa-wide,” she said.
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that Frannie Léautier is currently a partner and CEO of Mkoba Private Equity, and is no longer executive secretary of the Africa Capacity Building Foundation.
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