The Association of African Young Economist (AAYE), the only African independent, non-partisan think tank with scientific publication improvement objectives based in Africa, was established in beginning of the year 2013. Led by experienced practitioners and distinguish academics, its mission statement is: Cognizant of the relevance of knowledge economy in 21 century development, the AAYE is an institution which aims to facilitate scientific collaboration for contribution to and dissemination of knowledge towards development in the African continent. Its vision is to Africa?s leading research, publication and knowledge capacity strengthening institution. AAYE believe that better level of scientific publications on African issues and knowledge sharing can help for development and improve the lives of people in Africa and overseas by increasing prosperity, ensuring global sustainability, addressing inequality and promoting a more secure world. Through its close collaboration with others worldwide and especially Africa think tank and research centre, AAYE contribute to the sustainable development of the continent by fostering improvement the level of research and scientific publications by anyone interested and for Africa. Since in one hand Africa in general and African universities in particular are the last continent in terms of scientific training, research and publication, and in other hand there is no other institutions with this same objectives in Africa like it is in other continent, the work of AAYE is central to the major challenges facing the continent.

AAYE mission is to empower researcher and African research institutions through capacity strengthening. This would enable and motivate the institutions and individuals to conduct high quality scientific research for publication. The knowledge created and the capacity built should be useful in developing, adapting and disseminating technics that promote efficient and sustainable use of the continent?s research capacity.

The activities of the think tank are undertaken by staff at it?s headquarter in Yaounde, by Representations Units (currently there are three of them based at universities in Cameroon, Tunisia and Belgium) and by a virtual network of AAYE members. The think tank is located at the center of Yaounde town. AAYE has concluded with Cameroonian government a declaration of existence signed in 2013. Until now this document provide the basis for the functioning of AAYE in Cameroon.

In November 2013, the Board of Directors of AAYE approved its current strategic plan for the period 2013 to 2018. The plan articulates, for its future work, three programme areas consisting of research publication capacity development, communications and technical training. This allowed us to have the following strategic objectives: First, scale up and implement the development of African capacity to conduct and publish policy relevant economic research applied on rapidly changing African economic issues; secondly, fully incorporate economic policy individuals and research institutions into the AAYE network through innovative partnership and support; thirdly, foster recognition of AAYE in Africa and beyond.

Strategic objectives for 2014-2018
Since the creation of AAYE and until now, we have scheduled the following programme:

• Capacity building to foster research capacity;
• Request for grants for research project implementation;
• Round table and dissemination;
• Virtual networking;
• Research publications and knowledge management.

The team have also drafted a logframe.