Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: development policy, agency and Africa in the post-2015 development agenda
- one The post-2015 development agenda: Building a global convergence on policy options
- two Debating post-2015 development-oriented reforms in Africa: agendas for action
- three Public diplomacy for developmental states: implementing the African Mining Vision
- four The role of gender in development: where do boys count?
- five Service-oriented government: the developmental state and service delivery in Africa after 2015 – are capacity indicators important?
- six Employment creation for youth in Africa: the role of extractive industries
- seven Financing the post-2015 development agenda: domestic revenue mobilisation in Africa
- eight Economic performance and social progress in Sub-Saharan Africa: the effect of least developed countries and fragile states
- nine From regional integration to regionalism in Africa: building capacities for the post-Millennium Development Goals agenda
- ten Reforming the Development Banks’ Country Policy and Institutional Assessment as an aid allocation tool: the case for country self-assessment
- eleven Development and sustainability in a warming world: measuring the impacts of climate change in Africa
- twelve African development through peace and security to sustainability
- thirteen African development, political economy and the road to Agenda 2063
- Notes
- Index
two - Debating post-2015 development-oriented reforms in Africa: agendas for action
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 March 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: development policy, agency and Africa in the post-2015 development agenda
- one The post-2015 development agenda: Building a global convergence on policy options
- two Debating post-2015 development-oriented reforms in Africa: agendas for action
- three Public diplomacy for developmental states: implementing the African Mining Vision
- four The role of gender in development: where do boys count?
- five Service-oriented government: the developmental state and service delivery in Africa after 2015 – are capacity indicators important?
- six Employment creation for youth in Africa: the role of extractive industries
- seven Financing the post-2015 development agenda: domestic revenue mobilisation in Africa
- eight Economic performance and social progress in Sub-Saharan Africa: the effect of least developed countries and fragile states
- nine From regional integration to regionalism in Africa: building capacities for the post-Millennium Development Goals agenda
- ten Reforming the Development Banks’ Country Policy and Institutional Assessment as an aid allocation tool: the case for country self-assessment
- eleven Development and sustainability in a warming world: measuring the impacts of climate change in Africa
- twelve African development through peace and security to sustainability
- thirteen African development, political economy and the road to Agenda 2063
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The development history of Africa has been characterised by many twists and turns. Independence in the late 1950s and most of the 1960s was brought about by resistance to colonial sociopolitical and economic relations. For almost 30 years after that, ambitions for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) (a proposal from developing countries to revise the international economic system) was driven by a desire for an autonomous postcolonial development, including in Africa. The debt crisis, by undermining the financial space and tightening the dependence of the developing to the developed world, shattered the unity necessary for the achievement of the NIEO as then conceived (Radice, 2011). Many initiatives and attempts at new alliances were undertaken to try to break what was considered a dependent relationship between the global South and the ‘imperial North’, including the declaration of economic development as a human right – recognition of the links between rights violations, poverty, exclusion, vulnerability, conflict and failure to achieve development in its multidimensional form. If the 1970s saw a debate of what states could actively do to usher development in Africa, the 1980s saw an attempt to roll back the state. In both cases, the reforms were driven by a sense of limited success in delivering effective development – an environment where the population had a sense of acceptable access to services, voice and self-worth (Sen, 1990). Development was increasingly couched in the context of human freedom and the analysis of poverty put in a multidimensional context.
By 2000, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were born as a global compact to deliver this new vision of development. Today, rapid economic growth has arguably spread from Southeast Asia to Latin America, and now Africa. While much of the old capitalist industrialist heartland is mired in economic stagnation and fiscal crisis, some of the ‘emerging economies’ face an investment glut due to increased activities by investors to find new outlets for ‘redundant’ capital (Radice, 2011). Radice (2011) argues that the current trends in the world economy and global politics provide evidence that the global South has now arrived at ‘normal’ capitalism (characterised by heightened conflict between labour and capital), at last bringing with it new patterns of uneven development, inequality and injustice.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Development in AfricaRefocusing the Lens after the Millennium Development Goals, pp. 47 - 82Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2015