Director

CASP is a continental centre of excellence that attracts leading African scholars and Africans in the diaspora to reflect on critical issues of Africa's social progress. Also, it will serve as a platform where they will engage with African leaders and other senior policy makers.  The Centre is therefore framed in a manner that complements the objectives of both the Constitutive Act of the AU and the goals of NEPAD, and takes into account the continental focus contained in the HSRC Act, No. 17 of 2008.

In addition to research and policy dialogues on Africa's social progress, CASP will mentor young researchers from South Africa and the continent through fellowships that will enable them to spend short periods (3 - 6 months), either at the HSRC or at research/academic institutions on the continent, and help them to complete their research projects.

The Centre will work on developing an alternative framework for African development, emphasising the fact that economic development and social progress work in synergy and complement each other.

Buy-in to participate in the work of the Centre has been obtained from distinguished African researchers attached to senior positions in academic and development organisations in the North.

The Centre aims to achieve the following:

• To enhance social solidarity and promote African unity through rigorous research and dialogue on social progress and to create a better mutual understanding about conditions of African people;
• To create space for African scholars and policy makers to undertake rigorous research, write and engage in policy dialogues on social progress;
• To build a critical mass of established and emerging African scholars, and policy-makers who can contribute to social progress in the continent;
• To contribute to the establishment and consolidation of democratic and developmental states, inclusive societies and functioning markets in Africa that promote human well-being, prosperity, solidarity and social justice.