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The China–Africa relationship has received increased interest over the past few decades as scholars critically examine the challenge that China, in its quest for a closer strategic partnership with Africa, poses to the norms governing the neoliberal world order (NLWO). One crucial aspect of this is international aid, and how Chinese aid to Africa differs from Western aid. This paper argues that Chinese aid reduces the power of traditional aid donors to shape the development route of African countries. This new development finance ultimately breaks the monopoly of Western aid to decide how poor countries in the global 'South' develop. In doing so, the Sino–African aid relationship is challenging the current world order as it offers African states the possibility to decouple (or delink) themselves from the global economy. By challenging assumed neoliberal economic development fundamentals, this relationship, if harnessed correctly by African leaders, can pose longer-term ideological questions around the very set of ideas that underpin development itself, while enabling African states the policy space needed to pursue more sustainable development from an Afro-centric perspective. It is this possibility to delink, due to changing ideological fundamentals concerning economic development, that is the challenge China and Africa pose to the NLWO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current humanity is experiencing extraordinary levels of material and ideal connectivity. Change being constant and stability exceptional and provisional; one has to expect a significant acceleration of change in the next hundred years. The core question is therefore: What kind of future is being shaped for the next generations, our grandchildren and greatgrand children? Without going too far back in time, it is fair to say that the current world was shaped by two different, successive and antinomic global processes: imperial expansion, colonization and domination on the one hand, and resistance, struggle for liberation, and the search for a more equitable world order on the other hand. Against all the odds, European imperialism, civil war, wars of aggression, and Western ostracism, China was an influential actor in the struggle for liberation of Africa from colonialism, got its rightful place in the international world order and is now the second economy of the planet. Globalization resulted in the emergence of a de facto multipolar world, with different models of societies and organizational cultures. These are dialectic processes constantly in operation, but there is however a third crucial area of interest, generally taken granted, that of people and culture. Peaceful relations and sustainable economic development backed by greater cultural and demographic connectivity are better options for the construction of a novel future for humanity. Universities and higher education institutions can play an important role in spearheading and implementing these new orientations for the construction of a future peaceful and sustainable human world in which war will be outlawed. This paper outlines what academics can do to promote such a vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most African countries today are pursuing one or both of the following policy agendas as they strive towards a sustainable transition: 1) a global normative agenda moving away from traditional patterns of economic growth and toward a greater emphasis on sustainable development (2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development), and 2) a regional context-dependent development policy agenda that entails the achievement of a more radical structural transformation (Agenda 2063). Having identified these two overlapping policy agendas, both of which are aimed at moving away from an exclusive focus on economic growth, this article explores these development viewpoints with particular focus on capacity building in policymaking (the non-financial aspect), and the need for these to be further supported by more aggressive global partnership efforts (the financial aspect). By doing so, we are able to examine some transformation experiences in Africa as well as policy options that envisage greater inclusiveness, equality and sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]