The first two classes of the Masters in Public Economics and Applied Statistics (MEPSA in French) received their diplomas on Saturday 26 December 2009 during a lavish ceremony at the blue room of the Palais des Congrès in Cotonou.
In his welcoming words, the founder-director of IERPE has expressed his joy of seeing his dream of “offering here in Benin training in statistics and economics that is on par with European and North American institutions” coming true. After reminding the audience of the Institute of Empirical research in Political Economy (IERPE)’s genesis, Professor Leonard Wantchekon elaborated on MEPSA: “It's about using training and research to promote and to facilitate the use of statistics and data to formulate public policy and conceive development projects. It's about creating a culture in which political actors, civil society groups, journalists, researchers, etc. do not develop their arguments based on vague ideas or intuition but firmly based on data that has been rigorously collected and that reflect local realities, not in one region or sector.”
The representative of the minister of higher education and scientific research, David Azocli, encouraged the 23 graduates to pursue the efforts required by scientific research to deepen their knowledge on concepts learned at IERPE.
The representative of the graduates, Raman Kotchikpa Olodo highlighted that “regional integration and competition are alive with the MEPSA and its students of various nationalities and holidays are not distinct from regular days”.
Before receiving their degrees, the graduates had already started making use of the knowledge gained at IERPE through several well known institutions such as the World Bank country offices in Niger and Senegal, the Abidjan – Lagos Corridor, the Center for Democratic Governance in Burkina Faso, the Catholic University of Lomé, the University of Ouagadougou, GTZ, ADRAO, IERPE, among others.