CSAE 2026: What I Saw in Oxford This Year
This year’s Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) 2026 Conference at the University of Oxford brought together ~200 papers spanning agriculture, health, gender, climate, finance, and more, covering research in 33 African countries. Here is a roundup of what was presented, with one-line summaries and links to the papers. The Big Picture African representation What I love about CSAE is the African representation. I don’t know another economics conference where you can chat with people from across the continent over a single lunch. To measure this, I tried two approaches. First, I used AI to identify each speaker’s country of residence based on their primary affiliation. For global organizations like the World Bank, I assumed headquarters. By this measure, only about a quarter of speakers reside in Africa — though they come from 16 different African countries. The majority still come from the UK, Europe, and the US. ...