College of Business and Economics | Annual Report 2022 52 College of Business and Economics | Annual Rep rt 2022 52 and the winner of the Young Scholar award ($2 500) was Mr Ayabonga Cawe. As part of the Africa Industrial Policy in the 21st Century (AIP-21) collaborative research network, in November 2022, we hosted an AIP-21 workshop (in partnership with CCRED), with funding from the Danida Fellowship Centre’s Knowledge in Action initiative and from the NRF. The theme of this closed international workshop was “Green Industrialisation in Africa: The Critical Issues”. In keeping with the AIP-21 aim of bringing together leading academics and policy experts to discuss new directions for industrial development and policy in Africa, speakers hailed from various countries, including Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Ghana. The event was attended both in person and online by leading global scholars and dynamic emerging scholars. The next workshop will be held in Ghana in 2023, hosted by our partner, the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET). The Data and AI for African Trade (DAIAT) Consortium was established in 2022. The initiative is led by Prof Wim Naude, who is based at Cork University and is one of our Distinguished Visiting Professors. Prof Tregenna is one of the founder members and a SARChI-ID founding partner, with other researchers from the University College of Cork, the Machine Intelligence Institute of Africa, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Trade Advisory, GIBS of the University of Pretoria, University of Ghana, University of Plymouth, United Nations UNCTAD, and ZINDI. This consortium of European and African-based scholars and practitioners aims to secure funding to promote, develop and disseminate datadriven decision-making tools for supporting the expansion of sustainable and gender-responsive trade between the continents and is supported by the Irish Research Council’s (IRC) New Horizon’s programme through Cork University. We were able to leverage financial support for one of our master’s students, Ms Nokwanda Mathenjwa, through this project. Nokwanda produced a research brief on “Adoption of artificial intelligence technologies in African firms for potential exportled industrialisation”, with guidance from Dr Phumzile Ncube and Prof Tregenna. A research network comprised of SARChI-ID, CCRED, and other international researchers from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil UNIDO, and Inter-American Development Bank (Argentina), including our visiting professor, Antonio Andreoni. The research group is developing a new research agenda on digital industrialisation in middleincome countries. Extensive work has been done in consolidating firm-level data from all countries with country case studies designed for these outputs. An exciting new flagship project that has been one of our key activities during 2022 is the establishment of the African Trade and Industrialisation Observatory (AfTIO). AfTIO is envisaged as an open-access portal for secondary quantitative data, research papers, and policy documents on trade and industrialisation in Africa. With the possibilities for enhanced trade and industrialisation opened via the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), AfTIO will provide a database and document repository directly relevant to supporting the advancement of the AfCFTA. We aim for AfTIO to be of benefit to policymakers, researchers, and students, as well as the wider public. SARChI-ID is partnering with the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance (NMSPG) at UCT to establish AfTIO, which will be launched and available for public use early in 2023. THE WAY AHEAD Building on the successes of previous years, we are excited about the prospects for 2023. We are strengthening and expanding our collaborations and innovative activities towards impactful research and policy influence, stimulating public debates, building networks and partnerships, and building strong capacity at UJ and beyond.
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