Better Global Governance for a Stronger Africa: a New Era, a New Strategy1

While African countries have made substantial progress over the past two decades, characterized by higher growth and modest improvements in social and human development, they still face great challenges. These include high and stubborn levels of poverty, rising youth unemployment, structural fiscal imbalances and dependence on external financial assistance, heavily concentrated production and trade implying high vulnerability to shocks. Policy recommendations to handle these challenges have typically focused on what African countries themselves – or with the support from their development partners – should do to improve the continent’s economic fate. Less attention has been devoted to the role of global governance in addressing these challenges. Yet, features of the global governance architecture that undermine national policy and international cooperation continue to hamper efforts at the national, bilateral, and multilateral levels aimed at finding solutions to these development challenges. This paper discusses these issues and provides some policy suggestions