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The paper explores the contributions of undergraduate university education to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)' goals and development outcomes, proposing a normative capability-based approach oriented to human development. The approach is aligned with a developmental model of the university and development policy in sub-Saharan Africa and South Africa, where the study is located. It draws empirically from a four and a half year mixed-methods research project conducted with low-income, mostly rural students at five historically diverse universities in South Africa. The paper presents a justification for using the capability approach, and outlines the rationale and methodology for synthesising a specific capability set generated by theorising and empirical data. A set of corresponding functioning indicators offers an expansive approach to understanding 'learning outcomes' in contrast to dominant neoliberal approaches that seek quantification and efficiency, overlooking what cannot be easily measured. An indicative sketch of university arrangements required to advance and evaluate each functioning for development outcomes is then outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines how environmental degradation affects female economic inclusion. Using Generalised Least Squares (GLS) and Instrumental Variable Approach in Two-Stage Least Squares (IV-2SLS), a panel of 22 countries in sub-Saharan Africa was analysed for the period 1990–2013. We observe that CO2 emission (metric per capita), CO2 emissions from electricity and heat, CO2 emissions from liquid and fuel consumption, and CO2 intensity (emission from solid fuels such as wood, charcoal, and coal) appear to negatively affect female economic inclusion. This implies that environmental deterioration disproportionally affects the labour force participation of women. The paper recommends that policies that are designed to mitigate environmental pollution should also incorporate measures to address gender exclusion. This effort will not only reduce environmental vulnerability but will also create a window for women empowerment in vulnerable situations. This focus holds the potential for the attainment of SDG 5 in SSA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable Development Goal 8, Target 8.6, represents a direct commitment to improving the dramatic labour market situation of young people by substantially reducing the proportion of young people Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET) by 2020. This deadline has now passed, and while progress has been made in most EU countries, the situation of young people categorized as NEET in Sub-Saharan Africa has worsened over the past ten years. In this paper, we review the existing literature on youth employment in Africa and analyse the reasons for stalled progress. We debunk five myths of youth unemployment and underemployment, which have hampered understanding and progress. These are that: (1) education and training systems are defective, (2) youth micro-entrepreneurship and self-employment offer a panacea, (3) the informal sector is part of the problem and not part of the solution, (4) care work equates to inactivity, and (5) the agricultural sector has little potential for job creation. We recommend more research on the supply side of the African labour markets to provide a more nuanced understanding of the structural barriers to youth market entry and call for a concerted international effort to battle the youth employment crisis through job creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kingdom of Morocco decisively increased trade and diplomatic interaction with countries of Western and Sub-Saharan Africa since the mid-2000s, supplementing Morocco's long-standing foreign policy orientation toward the 'West'. Under the guidance of King Mohammed VI, the country gradually sought regional political rapprochement after several decades of relative isolation. The push for regional integration is taking place across multiple policy fields and goes hand in hand with a more assertive demeanour on the stage of international diplomacy. Environmental sustainability – encompassing renewable energy production and environmental protection measures – is a policy sector on which the autocratic Moroccan regime places special emphasis. This paper traces Morocco's 'green turn', the development of environmental sustainability policy under King Mohammed VI in context of Morocco's general foreign policy realignment. It analyses Morocco's environmental engagement at the foreign policy level in terms of soft power activity and gives tentative insight on Morocco's path of becoming an influential regional player in Western and Sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) seek to address some of the most critical contemporary global challenges in a 17-goal agenda, including poverty, inequality, global environmental and climate crises. Central to these goals is Goal 17, 'Partnership for the SDGs' which forms the core framework for implementation of SDGs across scale. After the first five years of implementation, remarkable progress has been recorded globally; however, significant gaps remain across world regions. For Goal 17, while lateral partnerships and sectoral collaborations have improved, there is little synergy at the local level especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Using the 'communities of practice' concept and reflecting on Ghana's local development framework, this paper contributes to the ongoing discourse on how best to localize global goals, and discusses the relevance of collaboration at the local level in the implementation of SDGs. Our analyses show weak integration of the SDGs into Ghana's local development structures and poor collaboration among actors at the local level. Given these findings, it is crucial to reprioritize SDG-17 in this last decade of the SDGs by mainstreaming the Goals into statutory local development structures while promoting collaboration and partnerships in 'communities of practice' at the local level – where implementation of development occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ensuring access to sustainable energy is equally relevant for both sustainable development and climate change mitigation. Mobilising private finance in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries will, in turn, be of crucial importance for achieving both Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 – which calls for universal energy access – and climate change mitigation goals defined under the Paris Agreement. In this paper, we assess how UNFCCC-backed climate finance instruments have engaged private investment for energy-focused climate mitigation in SSA. Based on this assessment, we develop recommendations for public climate finance institutions. Our work builds on documentary and database analysis and interviews, as well as participatory methodologies applied at a stakeholder workshop conducted in Kampala, Uganda, in 2018. Three case studies from Ethiopia, Madagascar and South Africa illustrate how climate finance interacts with domestic policy instruments, including in relation to the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism, South Africa's domestic renewable energy auctions, and the Green Climate Fund. The paper finds that there is no 'catch all' success model and approaches need to be tailored to local circumstances. Key policy insights International market mechanisms and climate finance can be key catalysts for private multibillion-dollar investment in energy access and climate mitigation, even under the challenging conditions facing many SSA nations. Market mechanisms need to be managed well to provide the private sector with the certainty needed to commit to fresh investments. A programmatic approach with standardised baseline and monitoring methodologies should be anchored in the next generation of project-based market mechanisms under Paris Agreement Article 6. Linking international and regional development programmes with the international carbon market might be an option for closing financing gaps, while at the same time increasing synergies between climate goals and SDGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As of today, access to electricity is still unavailable to 1.1 billion people in the world, half of which live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Projections suggest that this share will increase, leaving millions of people with limited development prospects. Kenya's nationally determined contribution (NDC) to the 2015 Paris Agreement includes a commitment to expand power supply, and in doing so, provide all its citizens with access to electricity. Access in rural areas, where the majority remains unconnected, is planned to be reached through different technologies. These include mini-grids, which are expected to bring multiple sustainable development benefits. However, comprehensive studies looking at synergies and trade-offs between environmental, social, and economic impacts of mini-grids are scarce. Analyzing the expected contribution of mini-grids to targets such as the NDC and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can provide evidence-based decision-support to policymakers, thus promoting well-designed and sustainable rural electrification policies. By using the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT) Sustainable Development Methodology, this paper goes beyond the calculation of greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts resulting from access to modern electricity, analyzing also other environmental and socio-economic implications of 146 solar PV mini grids under construction in Kenya. Using specific targets from the SDG framework, the paper presents a combined qualitative and quantitative analysis of the extent to which mini-grids can contribute to the implementation of Kenya's NDC and to sustainable development priorities. Key policy insights The deployment of mini-grids is expected to lower the GHG emissions of the villages currently without access to electricity by 71%. This contributes to 0.4% of the current NDC target for the power sector, in line with the capacity of the systems analyzed. This action is expected to also bring about positive impacts on electricity access, indoor air quality, healthcare, education and economic activities, which are found to contribute to 16 SDG targets. Apart from the economic investment required, possible negative impacts are associated with the electronic waste generated at the end-of-life of the mini-grids. Accounting for sustainable development impacts of policies can increase support among policymakers for climate action, and ultimately raise ambition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty alleviation has been positioned high on the international development agenda following the adoption of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000. African countries initiated various missions to establish sustained economic growth by increasing productivity with an ultimate goal of poverty reduction. The significance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in poverty reduction and employment generation is widely acknowledged. Despite the high failure rate amongst SMEs, particularly in the African context, some are striving with excellent results and are demonstrating signs of growth, innovation and sustainability. This paper explores the development of SMEs as a strategic measure for job creation in sub-Saharan Africa. It examines the role of SMEs in achieving sustainable employment in Africa. This study will benefit governments in Africa, getting them to focus on the development of the SMEs, and guiding them on how best to integrate SME development to achieve poverty alleviation. The recommendations proposed in this study may be helpful in policy formulation, business operation and regulatory practice for sustainable growth and development in the sub-Saharan African context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The equitable and universal provision of safe and affordable water is one of the Sustainable Development Goals, but progress has been slow, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper presents a case study of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to highlight water access progress at the city scale. Using household surveys and interviews with officials, it explains improvements in hours of water availability and numbers of household water connections, but also discusses the remaining challenges with water cost and customer satisfaction. To achieve the goal of universal access, the city must further increase water production and address concerns with how water quality is monitored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper integrates tourism, economic growth, and environmental issues in a multivariate format. Unlike recent research on this topic, a panel data of selected sample nations of sub-Saharan Africa is adopted by using cointegration and panel regression models. The current research discovers both long-run equilibrium and short-run dynamics between economic growth, tourism, energy use, and carbon emissions in sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, tourism and energy use show a highly significant direct impact on economic growth. In addition, tourism, energy use, and economic growth yield a highly significant positive effect on carbon emissions. Dissecting the region into oil producers and non-oil producers further suggests that the economic growth of sub-Saharan Africa has been accomplished by strong growth in tourism and energy use. However, there is highly significant evidence that in oil producing countries, CO2emissions are directly affected by energy use and economic growth and not by tourism. For non-oil producing countries, tourism and energy use but not economic growth incur a highly significant positive impact on carbon emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Travel philanthropy is an evolving phenomenon. It owes its origins to rising frustrations with conventional aid and traditional philanthropic giving and is seen as development assistance enabling resources to flow directly from the tourism industry into community development and conservation initiatives. Philanthropists have long sought to achieve social transformation, and travel philanthropy in all its forms has evolved through the democratization of charity, as a kind of “doing good” through “giving back” whilst travelling. This paper evaluates values, practices and impacts of traditional, modern and post-modern philanthropy. Drawing upon evidence emerging from a longitudinal study, which involved the retrospective evaluation of personal diary entries, participant observations and semi-structured interviews about the transcontinental Plymouth–Banjul (car) Challenge (PBC), it exemplifies how an initiative can evolve across all three philanthropic approaches. It further debates critical understandings of the problematic travel philanthropy concept and its role in stimulating sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than 50 years after independence Africa is yet to move from colonial to post-colonial identity – and to entitlement to determining its own destiny. Increasingly, however, African development thinkers and practitioners are questioning the dominance of externally driven, mostly Western models of development, which they believe have done little to date toward bringing about self-reliant sustainable development. We have observed successful patterns of endogenously led development in East Asia and Brazil. In Africa the papers included here suggest emerging new patterns of local leadership and of resurrecting and renewing cultural and traditional strengths to support modern development. Endogenous development, while a sometimes awkward term, is a concept increasingly informing practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]