Oceans: ECA introduces model to advance policy and economic planning in Africa

Abstract

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and Applied Development Research Solutions (ADRS) announced the launch of the Online Economic Analysis System (OCEANS), a web-based economics tool to help policymakers and researchers make quantitative predictions of African economies. OCEANS is a new interactive website that allows users to design, simulate and forecast the impact of alternative economic policy scenarios. The interactive tool allows users to easily input policy reforms for a given country and, within minutes, view how the policy choices affect the country’s economic growth, employment and income. Since each country model is based on its unique input-output dataset, the generated results are unique to each country. Access to OCEANS is free to all African member-state governments, organizations, and institutions that use the system to conduct public policy research on Africa.