ACROPOLIS programme
ACROPOLIS stands for ACademic Research Organisation for POLicy Support. The ACROPOLIS groups conduct academic research and provide academic services tailored to the Belgian development cooperation. Bringing together policymakers and researchers, their aim is continued professionalization and improvement in the quality and impact of the Belgian development cooperation policy. ACROPOLIS also contributes to the international visibility of Belgian academic expertise in development cooperation. The programme is funded by the Directorate-General for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid (DGD) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through ARES-CCD and VLIR-UOS.
With ACROPOLIS, ARES-CCD funds the successor of the GRAP, which has been providing successful decision-making support research from 2009 until 2013. New for the current programme is that ARES-CCD works together with its Dutch-speaking sister organisation, VLIR-UOS, in order to build bridges across the academic language divide in function of sound development cooperation policy-making on a coordinated, Belgian level.
VLIR-UOS and ARES-CCD provide an average funding of € 330.000 per group per year.
Themes
Every one of the three ACROPOLIS groups focuses on a specific theme, which is relevant for the Belgian development cooperation:
- Aid Effectiveness with a focus on fragile contexts (Mali, Niger, Rwanda, Burundi and DR Congo), which is the object of the current website hosted by GRAPAX. The ACROPOLIS group dedicated to Aid Effectiveness with a Focus on Fragile Contexts gathers academic partners from Université St Louis Bruxelles (coordinating university), Université libre de Bruxelles, Université catholique de Louvain, Université de Liège, Universiteit Gent. Its main fields of research are the Great Lakes Region of Africa and Sahel. It builds on the network previously set up under GRAPAX – Groupe de recherche en appui aux politiques de paix.
- Integration of the environmental and climate change themes in the transition towards sustainable development
- Financing for development
