Call for articles by Pambazuka: African perspectives on the post-2015 agenda for development

The purpose for this special edition is to nourish reflection and debate consisting of new perspective from Africa as an active player in global development processes.
A lot of debate in the recent past, among scholarly spaces and in civil society circles, has highlighted the failure of the MDGs to achieve the objectives set, evoking, among other causes, a lack of consideration of the historical and structural factors in their conception.

While the desire to find solutions to global development at an international level has not abated, non-achievement of certain objectives led to a reconsideration of some African-centered development models.

Debates surrounding the reasons for such the failure to achieve dramatic change globally have raised questions about the sustainability of such goals, how many there should be, whether we even need global goals at or should focus on regional bodies to produce regional goals and strategies to meet them.

The focus on the millennium development goals from local and national NGOs, governments, and international organisations (profit and non-profit making) as a route of funding and thus where their focus has rested show the importance of African engagement in the creation of future goals. The funding has been driven to the 10 MDGss often at the expense of other areas of necessity.

It has been declared as a goal of the Post-2015 Agenda that there will be an attempt to incorporate the Global South equally in the negotiating process. This declaration provides scope for the voices of Africa to be heard at the negotiating table. This opportunity must be taken to ensure that new thinking is incorporated in the production of sustainable and long-term approaches to questions of development in the post-2015 development agenda.

Pambazuka News opens a series of angles on which you can contribute, as well as any other analysis that you could bring to this crucial debate on Africa and the South.

• Were Africans efectively involved in the creation of the MDGs? Do limitations in this involvement explain the failures? At what level and how should Africans have been more involved?
• Is it possible to have one Global South voice? Or even a single African voice? And is it necessary to be heard in this process, in the hope of taking into account the real genuine aspirations of Africans, or is it always a fool’s game?
• When talking about post-development, whose development should it be? Should Africa focus on continental goals rather than global ones?
• How can the Post-2015 agenda incorporate the crucial role and place of women in Africa?
• What role should there be for the international community (including the global North but also the increasing influence of BRICS) in setting the development agenda for Africa?
• How and why is it important to recognize the weight of the colonial past when it comes to addressing the existing structural inequalities in Africa and the world?
• Can there be an African-centered agenda for autonomous post-development? Do we need to make a return to the Lagos Plan of 1986?

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF ARTICLES: May 13, 2015
LENGTH OF ARTICLES: Articles should be written in Microsoft Word, Times New Roman, size 12 and be between 1000-3000 words

Submit a short biography of two lines at the end of your article and send it to: gro.akuzabmap@rotide