By Landry Signé
Africa is home to many of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Landry Signé’s “African Development, African Transformation” (Cambridge University Press, 2019) traces new continental institutions for development and their capacity to affect economic growth, regional integration, and international cooperation in Africa. It also assesses Africa’s ability to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and the African Union’s Agenda 2063. As the continent’s most ambitious development initiative since independence, the African Union Development Agency (or AUDA, previously known as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development or NEPAD) provides an excellent case study for examining how an African-based, continent-wide development institution emerged. Inspired by the ideas of Pan-Africanism and the African renaissance, NEPAD was created to bring Africa into the globalizing world, to close the gap between developing and developed countries, to enhance economic growth, and to eradicate poverty. Almost two decades after NEPAD’s creation and given its transformation into AUDA, this brilliant book examines AUDA’s role in achieving these goals.
