Sustainability challenges and opportunities in Africa

Abstract

In much of international development literature, thesub-Saharan African region represents a prolonged devel-opment crisis (Stiglitz 2007; Sachs 2005; Easterly 2006;Collier 2007; Moyo 2009). Despite the recent remarkabledevelopment gains by some sub-Saharan African countriesdriven by a combination of factors—increasing democra-tization and transparency, strengthening and reform ofgovernance institutions, surge in commodity prices, andthe adoption and implementation of more effectivemacro-economic policies—the region still faces dauntingsustainable development challenges. With 48 countries, apopulation of over 700 million, and an average per capitaincome of roughly US$1 a day, sub-Saharan Africaremains, in economic terms, the poorest region in theworld. Put in the context of global development trends,Africa’s development travails are complicated by a starkparadox—whereas extreme poverty levels have declinedglobally in various regions of the world since 1980, theproportion of people living in abject poverty in Africa haveincreased. To paraphrase Moyo (2009), the number ofAfricans living in abject poverty nearly doubled in 2 dec-ades (1991–2002). Notwithstanding Africa’s developmentcrisis, the continent is endowed with abundant renewableand non-renewable natural resources (African Develop-ment Bank 2007). In the context of sustainability, espe-cially the often complex links between environment anddevelopment, how best could Africa’s natural resources beharnessed to advance sustainable development of the con-tinent? How can Africa’s governance and institutionalframeworks and policies be strengthened to respond to theemerging and re-emerging sustainability challenges facingthe continent and its people?While the twenty-first century has witnessed sustaineddemand for Africa’s natural resources—oil, minerals,and other raw materials—the continent continues to lackeffective institutional capacity to manage these resourcessustainably. Added to the continent’s vulnerabilities toclimate change, Africa’s ongoing sustainable developmentefforts must, as of necessity, link the environment (nature),economic growth (wealth) and governance (power) as theessential elements in poverty reduction strategies (AfricanDevelopment Bank 2007). Although the linkages betweenAfrica’s socioeconomic development and the continent’snatural, ecological, and climatic factors have been thesubject of relevant development literature (Sachs 2005;Collier 2007), this discourse has also identified the need forthe continent to develop effective, accountable, and trans-parent governance institutions to manage these complexdevelopment-environment-climate linkages. Economic andinvestment policies in Africa that recognize and integratethese approaches will likely yield positive developmentoutcomes towards achieving the Millennium Develop-ment Goals (Kates and Dasgupta 2007; World Bank2002; United Nations Development Programme 2006;UNMillennium Project 2005).This Special Issue—focusing on African Regional Per-spectives—offers an overlapping theme that spans fourbroad categories of local and continent-wide sustainabilitychallenges in Africa: evaluation and assessment; integrat-ing indigenous knowledge; climate change; and policy andgovernance. The selection process, to the greatest extentpossible, prioritized inter-disciplinary and multi-institu-tional research. The African research priorities set out inthe Strategy for Global Environmental Change Research inAfrica: Science plan and implementation strategy (Odada