From the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Africa in the post-2015 development Agenda. A geographical perspective

Abstract

With this special issue, the African Geographical Review aims at offering a multifaceted geographical perspective on Africa’s development in the global post-2015 development agenda. This project was born from the conviction that human geography is an applied discipline that has fundamental insights to offer to global debates and to the search for innovative solutions to advance the global development agenda beyond 2015, with a specific focus on Africa, its challenges and potential. Furthermore, human geography, and more specifically political and economic geography, offer invaluable theoretical and methodological understanding for analyzing issues related to development and sustainability and in the search for lasting solutions at the core of the global development agenda. These geographic insights are particularly important for Africa, a continent unique in its development challenges and opportunities compared to other developing regions of the world. At the same time, Africa is rich in internal (inter- and intra-country) geographical variation (sociocultural, economic, political and institutional, ecological, and historical). Africa, therefore requires context-specific nuance in analyzing its problems to arrive at particular sets of context-appropriate solutions in general, and especially as the global community transitions from implementation of the Millennium Development Goals and the post-2015 agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Keywords:

• MDGs
• SDGs
• post-2015 development agenda
• Africa
• geographies

Notes

1. Values are based on statistics maintained by the U.S. Centres for Disease Control website, http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/2014-west-africa/case-counts.html.

2. United Nations Millennium Declaration (55/2), Resolution adopted by the General Assembly, 8 September 2000: http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.htm

3. ‘The Future We Want.’ Outcome document of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development June 2012, Para 247. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/733FutureWeWant.pdf