IDEAs is holding, in collaboration with Action Aid International, a workshop which is aimed at building stronger local and national work on economics, specifically in working together with groups on questions relating to economic democracy, which include political economy literacy and budget accountability work. The event will bring together approximately 50 civil society organisations from around 22 countries in Africa, Asia and Americas. The workshop will be held over 26-31st of January, 2008 in New Delhi, India.

Many of the groups who will be attending this workshop are practitioners who have been involved with different aspects of either economic literacy or budget work in their own countries and have been connected with Elbag processes. Some other groups will be joining the process new.

This is the third in the series of these efforts. The first two, in Bangkok and Abuja respectively, were initial building blocks in the effort, in which more than 50 groups and staff participated. This workshop is intended to build on specific skills. A major part of this workshop would deal with expanding discussions and inputs from a political economy perspective – on the questions of finance flows, on the issues of finance for development - and national development questions, apart from modules on methodologies tools and instruments. .

IDEAs is providing an academic and research input into the event.

This event will be preceded by an IDEAs workshop on 'India, China and the World Economy', which will be held on the 24th of January, 2008 in the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.

Click here for the Programme

This workshop is part of IDEAs’ efforts to launch a series of studies and workshops analysing the implications of the rapid growth in China and India for other developing economies and for further articulating positions taken by developing country groupings in international economic negotiations. Of particular interest at present is the differential engagement of the two countries in Africa and the implications of the same for African development.

This particular workshop will aim at addressing the issues that emerge from the two countries' spectacular growth and the impact on other developing economies in the world. The workshop also aims to draw on policy frameworks which can act as lessons not only for other developing countries but also highlight policy issues which must be addressed within these two countries which can make their high growth better distributed among their large populations.

January 9, 2008.