Old Problems and New Realities in Africa - and the role of Development Cooperation

‘Is development cooperation closely attuned to the challenges and problems facing African countries?’ This question sparked the work behind this report. In a time of multiple global crises, we need to revisit our diagnosis of the continent at the frontlines of the most acute economic, social, and environmental crises.

In recent years, the global development landscape has undergone important transformations as countries and development actors have had to deal with new layers of challenges in addition to ‘old problems’. In addition to global shocks like the covid-19 pandemic and the Russian war on Ukraine, we’ve seen a series of long-brewing crises which also pose grave challenges to global stability and prosperity. These include increasing and unsustainable debt, the accumulated effects of the climate and nature crisis, demographic trends out of step with labour markets, inflation and recession, and the slowdown of the impressive poverty reduction from recent decades. We believe this necessitates a stockpiling and re-consideration of development cooperation strategies.