Africa's Development Thinking since Independence: A Reader

The publication of the second edition of this reader was motivated by a number of factors. First is the fact that, since the publication of the first edition, many developments have taken place in Africa, which are aimed not only at encouraging the compliance of member states of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) (which has now been transformed into the African Union) with their treaties, protocols, and summit decisions; there has also been a significant effort towards developing common standards and values for democratic governance on the continent. By contrast, the first edition was more focused on a narrow definition of ‘development thinking’, without factoring in the importance of democratic governance as a concept and political practice. This edition is aimed at addressing that lacunae. Second, there are documents contained in the first edition, which needed to be updated or even replaced. The ‘UN-NADAF Mid-Term Review’ is thus replaced with the ‘United Nations New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990’s base document. Similarly, the Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation in Africa (CSSDCA)’ background document is now replaced with the ‘CSSDCA Solemn Declaration’. In addition, there are also new documents in this edition: the OAU Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism Convention, of 1999; the Declaration on the Framework for an OAU Response to Unconstitutional Changes of Government, of 2000; the OAU/AU Declaration on the Principles Governing Democratic Elections in Africa, of 2002; the NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development) Declaration on Democracy, Political, Economic and Corporate Governance, of 2002; and the NEPAD African Peer Review Mechanism, of 2003. The importance of these new documents is discussed below. As to the OAU Terrorism Convention, its inclusion is necessitated by the current focus on the ‘war on terror’ and the anti-terrorism actions taken across the world, within multilateral institutions and countries. This convention must be read together with the Declaration Against Terrorism (proposing an additional protocol to the convention) that came out of the African summit on terrorism, which was convened in Dakar, Senegal, a month after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. Important also is the AU Plan of Action on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism, which was adopted at the senior officials’ anti-terrorism meeting that was convened in Algiers, Algeria, in September 2002.