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Using knowledgeand peer learningto improvepolicies to reducepoverty in AfricaJoint ECA/AERC Conference onPoverty, Inequality and LabourMarketsAddis Ababa, Ethiopia11 October 2006This joint AERC/ECA Conference on “Poverty, Inequality, and LabourMarkets” was organised to disseminate the results of anAERC research program on that theme. ECA’s partnership with AERCis consistent with our goal of advancing the frontiers of knowledgeon issues that are of critical importance to our region and makingthat knowledge readily available to policy makers for improved decision-making.ECA is committed to partnering with African researchinstitutions to accompany our countries in their search for durableanswers to the challenges of development that they face.This Conference is important for reasons that we all know – povertyremains a major development challenge in our region, a problemthat bars our access to the club of developed countries. Butthe Conference is important for another reason: because it is a disseminationconference, it underscores our faith, our confidence thatknowledge about the determinants of poverty can help us abolish it.Gareth Stedman Jones, in his 2004 book, “An End to Poverty?”, whichtraces the history of ideas on poverty eradication not only remindsus that there once was a time when it was believed that the intellectualprogress of humankind would be accompanied by a materialtransformation of the human condition but also shows that thoseideas did indeed contribute to the near abolition of poverty in westernEurope.Integrating Africa275