Research Team working on COVID Related Rapid Response Initiatives on Financing of Emergencies wins Grant from the Open Society Initiative For East Africa

With the continued state of emergency taking place globally surrounding the COVID pandemic a team of researchers from the Committee of Fiscal Studies (CFS) funded by the Open Society Initiative for East Africa (OSIEA) won a grant on issues of rapid response needed in cases of fiscal emergencies.

The Committee on Fiscal Studies represents the first stage of the formation of the African Institute of Fiscal Studies which will be housed within the University of Nairobi. It brings together a group of taxation experts whose focus is on providing sustained and advanced level capacity building in fiscal governance at the national, regional and international level. To this end, the committee uses a multidisciplinary approach to bring together academics and institutions that engage in discourse linked to resource mobilisation and taxation such as economics, human rights, anthropology, development studies, history and poverty alleviation and gender equality.

The team led by the Chair of the CFS and the Principal Investigator, Prof Attiya Waris will be supported by Mary Ongore and a team of researchers under the CFS will engage in discourse on the information surrounding the financing of emergencies. They will also map out emergency funds across the continent and how spending should be and could be taking place by developing alternative scenarios on revenue collection and spending in emergencies. This includes running of a webinar series and a blog series on the impact of COVID on the economy. In addition they will also map out emergency funds across the continent and unpack it for the better understanding of peoples in their governance concerns. The culmination of this research will result in the formulation of a variety of policy briefs, journal articles and working papers on the effects that the pandemic has had across a variety of sectors. The team will seek collaborations and engagement with like-minded institutions and individual experts and other stakeholders conducting research on issues around Covid-19 in order to encourage multi-disciplinary discussions.

This grant will allow for immediate responses to the COVID pandemic during the 6 months of the emergency as the issues continue to unfold and develop. It will be accompanied by a comprehensive long term review of the research strategy for the CFS emergency response initiative.