Submission of abstracts: 31st December, 2016
What: The 4th LSE Africa Summit
Theme: Built for Africa: African Solutions to African Issues?
Where: London on March 31, 2017
When: 31 March – 1 April 2017.
The LSE Africa Summit is an annual two-day conference that showcases Africa’s contributions to the world.
Africa’s struggle for independence was largely driven by a desire to wean herself off exogenous solutions, ideas, and systems. In keeping with this desire, different political and economic platforms such as the African Union (AU) and various Regional Economic Communities (RECs), were formed to safeguard and promote the interests of Africans. Over the years, however, the dream of building a self-reliant Africa, capable of generating its own ideas and resolving its own challenges, has lost momentum. The continent continues to rely heavily on international development assistance in critical areas, such as health, education, and security. While Africa has not realized its dream of providing solutions to its problems, it has made some notable progress.
The impressive prevention of Ebola outbreak in Nigeria through mainly local efforts, with minimal international support; and the development of M-pesa, a world-renowned microfinancing service, by a Kenyan mobile network operator, point to the importance of solving African issues with African solutions. The 2017 LSE Africa Summit seeks to expand these expand home-grown and inclusive solutions to reshape Africa’s poor development trajectory.
Research Conference
The 4th LSE Africa Summit invites submissions of papers to be considered for presentation during the Annual Research Conference on the theme: “Built for Africa: African Solutions to African Issues?”, to be held in London on March 31, 2017. The conference will bring together top-tier researchers from around the world and high-level policymakers to advance dialogue on Africa’s developmental issues. It is intended to improve the feedback loop between researchers who produce knowledge and policymakers who rely on policy relevant and timely evidence-based research to make decisions.
The conference will be feature parallel sessions based on contributed papers and projected presentations. These will be complemented by debates and keynote speeches by renowned speakers from academia, government, and practitioners. The conference will conclude with a policy roundtable session focused on distilling core messages for a policy-focused audience.
Research Topics
In particular, but not exclusively, the organizers invite submissions (papers and presentations of projects) from all areas of work related to the following themes:
- Building a Secure Africa: Conflict, Terrorism, and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P)
- Reinventing Africa’s Educational Systems: New Frontiers in Structure and Delivery
- From the Streets to the Courts: Citizen-Led Accountability
- Inno-Native Design: Locally Contextualized Solutions
- Harnessing Africa’s Informal Sector
All submissions must focus on Africa and use data on individuals, households, firms, or other organizations. Papers authored by African scholars are particularly encouraged. The organizers plan to publish articles in peer-reviewed journals to ensure high standard of quality control and distribution to a wide audience as a collection of papers.
Submission Instructions
- Authors are invited to submit papers describing original, previously unpublished work, not currently under review by another conference, workshop, or a journal.
- An abstract should be up to 200 words, it should describe the rationale and aims of the paper, and some of its results. General descriptions of broad contexts should be avoided.
- The full contact details about the author(s) need to be provided. Abstracts can be written in English, French, Portuguese, or Arabic, should be written in the third person and not in the first or second one (e.g. I, me, or my paper).
- Submissions must include the paper’s title and a short biography that includes authors current position.
- Abstracts selected for the submission of full papers, must be within the word limit of 6000 and 8000 words.
Benefits:
- The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) will cover all economy class travel and accommodation costs for one author/presenter of a limited number of the papers selected for inclusion in the Research Conference.
Abstracts, full papers, and enquiries should be submitted by email to africasummit@lse.ac.uk.
Timeline:
- Submission of abstracts: 31st December, 2016
- Notification of selected abstracts: 7th January, 2017
- Submission of full papers: 20th February, 2017
- Notification of selected papers: 27th February 2017
For More Information:
Visit the Official Webpage of the 2017 LSE Africa Summit
