The African Growth & Development Policy (AGRODEP) Modeling Consortium held its first training course in March 2012 in Dakar, Senegal on building and updating social accounting matrices (SAMs). Twelve members from nine African countries attended the training which introduced participants to national accounts tables and taught them how to reconcile this data into a single SAM framework using a GAMS-based program. Participants also learned how to transform a SAM into an input-output table used in global CGE models.

1. AGRODEP Training on:
Building and Updating a Social Accounting Matrix
 The African Growth & Development Policy (AGRODEP)
Modeling Consortium held its first training course on
March 13-15, 2012 at the IFPRI WCAO in Dakar,
Senegal.
 The AGRODEP Modeling Consortium is an initiative
lead by IPFRI and aiming at positioning African
experts to take a leading role in the study of strategic
development questions and the broader agricultural
growth and policy debate facing African countries.
 Twelve AGRODEP members from nine African
countries attended the training course on "Building and
Updating Social Accounting Matrices” (SAM).
 Participants were introduced to the national accounts
tables before reconciling them into a single framework:
the SAM. The latter is the consistent quantitative
macroeconomic data framework representing the flows
between different sectors and institutional units within
an economy during a given period of time, in general,
one year. Then, participants used a GAMS-based
program to reconcile information into the SAM
framework. They also learnt how to transform a SAM
into an input-output table used by global CGE models.
 The course was conducted by Ismael Fofana, a Post-
Doctoral Fellow at IFPRI and Network Coordinator of
AGRODEP.