Reflections on Priorities for the Post-2015 Development Agenda: the African Narrative

In February 2013, the UN Millennium Campaign in Africa held two meetings with various partners in the region in preparation of the UNDP Governance Division Global Thematic Consultation on Governance and Post 2015 Development to be held in Johannesburg.

African thinkers, parliamentarians and civil society organizations who gathered in Midrand, South Africa, articulated what is emerging as a growing consensus in various fora taking place on the continent.

These two meetings and their corresponding outcome documents are what is referred to as the “Africa Narrative”. The outcome documents bellow successfully fed into the Global Governance Consultation.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) agenda helped to focus the world’s attention on the importance of explicitly concentrating on and channeling resources to poverty reduction and various dimensions of social development. In Africa, this was against the backdrop of structural adjustment and ‘development as usual’ policies which had not only failed to deliver human development outcomes, but also resulted in reversals in a number of countries.