Development policy, agency and Africa in the post-2015 development agenda

Author(s):  
George Kararach ◽  
Hany Besada ◽  
Timothy M. Shaw ◽  
Kristen Winters
Social Change ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-309
Author(s):  
Senkosi Moses Balyejjusa

Sustainable development has become a mantra in politics, academia and development policy and practice. Indeed, many policy and practice strategies, such as the sustainable development goals, have been devised in order to achieve sustainable development. Although the contents and items in these agendas are human needs, the use of ‘human needs’ language is less emphasised/explicitly spelt out. In fact, the language of human needs is almost absent. In this article, I argue that the adoption of the human needs language will strengthen sustainable development practice, efforts and agenda. This is because, unlike other aspirations, human needs by nature are universal. Secondly, human needs are limited in number compared to wants, desires, goals and capabilities. This nature of human needs makes the human needs language effective in promoting the sustainable development agenda and efforts, thus, adequately meeting the needs of the current and future generations.


Author(s):  
Rittich Kerry

This chapter explores the scholarship and practice surrounding international law and development. As a field, law and development might be understood as theoretical in its essence: it revolves around the rise, diffusion, transformation, and disintegration of ideas, theories, concepts, and paradigms concerning law and social change. Political agendas, institutional constraints, as well as economic interests are all crucial to understanding the manner in which the law and development agenda has evolved. Development policy and practice have been crucially important to the generation of global governance norms. Law and development has become at once a source and repository of norms about the forms and functions of law, domestic as well as international, and a powerful counterweight to other sources of law in the international order.


2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naila Kabeer

This paper argues that while social policy as an explicit aspect of policy discourse has relatively recent origins within the international development agenda, concerns with “the social” have featured from its very early days seeking to challenge the conflation between growth and development. The paper focuses on key international conferences and policy documents to analyse contestations over the meanings of “the social” within development policy discourse and their efforts to rethink its boundaries with “the economic”. It suggests that these contestations have helped to spell out the basic outlines of an alternative policy agenda in which concerns with “the social” have come to define both the means and ends of development.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 202
Author(s):  
Victor Lord Owusu

This paper measures the level of participation in Ghana’s four most recent development policy and planning documents, from the Vision 2020 to the Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda. Using Systematic Review and a developed modified version of Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation, the paper concludes that development planning in Ghana is top down and non participatory. The paper further uncovered that civilian and military governments before and after independence in 1957 adopted the top down approach and planned from the centre with no traces of citizens’ participation in the planning processes. It was further determined that this top down and non participatory mode of planning is deeply enshrined in Ghana’s current and past development planning culture and history, a legacy bequeathed to colonies by colonialists.


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 221-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Farrell

This article examines the group politics in global development policy from the Millennium Development Goals (mdgs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (sdgs). The discussion tracks the actors and forces that shaped both sets of goals, and highlights the centrality of multilateral processes in framing the background for the interplay of group politics. With the expansion in the number and diversity of actors, and the United Nations system facilitating the engagement of multiple actors, ultimately the negotiation of the sdgs reflected a new diplomacy derived from mediation of multiple interests within a multilateral context.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. p63
Author(s):  
George FUH KUM

This paper studies the Green Revolution and its input to Cameroon’s planned development agenda from 1973 to 1986. After attaining statehood, Cameroon like most African states, espoused strategies, aimed at enhancing its socio-economic developments. All these emerged from its foremost planned development policy, introduced in 1960. This policy initially laid emphasis on industrialisation, which was too costly and inert to spur socio-economic growth. Agriculture was thus reconsidered as the basis for real development in the country and the green revolution ideology was adopted to embolden this ambitious quest. Launched in 1973, the revolution did swiftly and hugely enhance Cameroon’s socio-economic development, but nevertheless faded due to obvious deficiencies and the setting in of the economic crunch in 1986. This paper argues that despite its merely ideological bearing and hasty end, the Green Revolution remained a very vital spur to Cameroon’s planned development programme and propounds perspectives for more enhancing inputs. It is built on primary and secondary data and analysed qualitatively.


Oryx ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dilys Roe

AbstractSince the early 2000s increasing attention has been paid to the relationship between biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction and a debate has ensued over various aspects of this relationship. One element of this debate has been concerned with an apparent lack of attention to biodiversity conservation on the international development agenda following the prioritization of poverty reduction. This paper explores whether this lack of attention is real or perceived by reviewing changes in biodiversity policy within the UK Department for International Development (DFID). It is clear that attention to biodiversity within DFID policy has changed significantly over time. There was strong support for wildlife conservation until the 1990s, including technical assistance, funding for integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs), and community-based conservation. By the 2000s, however, the main focus had switched from funding wildlife conservation to mainstreaming biodiversity concerns into development policy. The degree to which the explicit focus on poverty reduction that emerged in the late 1990s drove this change is debatable. Changes in aid architecture, UK politics and clearer differentiations between the roles of DFID and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in addressing biodiversity concerns have also shaped DFID's policy. Meanwhile, the political traction afforded to climate change demonstrates that it is possible for environmental issues to sit alongside poverty reduction in international development policy. However, communicating the societal implications of biodiversity loss has proved to be more challenging than for climate change. Better understanding of the mechanisms by which development assistance is disbursed would help the conservation community identify key opportunities for engagement.


Redes ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer Randolph

Resumo Apesar de ser cedo para avaliar as recentes mudanças políticas e institucionais que houve, no Brasil, especialmente a nível do Estado e do governo federal, não parece arriscado trabalhar com a hipótese de que os obstáculos que já atrasaram a aprovação e a implementação da Política Nacional de Desenvolvimento Regional, a PNDR II, elaborada a partir de 2012, tendem a aumentar e podem levar, em última instância, ao abandono dessa política. Nessas circunstâncias, eis a proposta defendida neste trabalho: a discussão sobre políticas de desenvolvimento regional poderia resgatar a agenda do desenvolvimento regional em outras escalas e por meio de novos formatos institucionais. Em última instância, o presente ensaio pretende apresentar uma argumentação que sustenta essa perspectiva por meio de quatro passos. Primeiro, será elaborada a compreensão mais profunda do significado da aparente “impossibilidade” de criar uma política regional nacional. Para auxiliar essa análise, a seguinte discussão sobre politica, planejamento, governo e governança vai apresentar uma determinada concepção do Estado (capitalista), oriunda da articulação de três principais autores, Poulantzas, Offe e Jessop. Ao optar por uma compreensão próxima ao pensamento de Gramsci torna-se possível, no passo seguinte, compreender o termo governança criticamente. Finalmente, o artigo dedica-se a uma apreciação crítica das condições de viabilizar, concretamente, essa concepção neogramsciana de governança. Chega-se à conclusão que a “exequibilidade” de uma governança que exige a inclusão “real” de forças sociais desprivilegiadas possa depender da escala (social, territorial) na qual está sendo exercida. Pode ser um caminho promissor de pensar numa “superação dialética” do poder local para resgatar agendas regionais. Abstract Although it is early to evaluate the recent political and institutional changes that have taken place in Brazil, especially at the level of the State at federal level and the Federal Government, it does not seem risky to work with the hypothesis that obstacles that have already delayed approval and implementation of the National Development Policy Regional, PNDR II, elaborated from 2012, tend to increase and may ultimately lead to the abandonment of this policy. In these circumstances, the proposal advocated in this paper, the discussion on regional development policies could rescue the regional development agenda at other scales and through new institutional formats. Ultimately, this essay intends to present an argument that supports this perspective by four steps. First, a deeper understanding of the meaning of the apparent "impossibility" of creating a national regional policy will be developed. To support this analysis, the following discussion of politics, planning, government, and governance follows a particular conception of the (capitalist) state, coming from the articulation of three main authors, Poulantzas, Offe, and Jessop. In opting for an understanding close to Gramsci's thoughts it becomes possible, in the next step, to understand the term governance critically. Finally, the article is devoted to a critical appreciation of the conditions to concretize this neo-Gramscian conception of governance. It concludes that the "feasibility" of governance that requires the "real" inclusion of underprivileged social forces may depend on the scale at which it is being pursued. It may be a promising path to think of a "dialectical overcoming" of local power to rescue regional agendas.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document