4 - Problematising the Normative Trajectory of Sustainable Development in Africa

Summary

Chapter 4 analyses the history, evolution, internalisation, and legal operationalisation of sustainable development in Africa. The analysis reveals how concepts like sustainable development flow through nations and regions without being influenced by the peoples and politics that matter to that part of the world. It reveals the colonial and postcolonial politics of natural resource access in Africa by mapping the concept’s progress. It discusses the concept and its link to the international law on nature conservation and how that history omitted Africa as a framework for analysing the law and politics of sustainable development. It also explores Africa’s perspectives on international law relative to the Global South’s position on sustainable development within the never-ending Third World international law-making project. It also reveals deficits in the dominant rights-based approach to sustainable development in Africa as uncritically empowering the state over non-state interests as the state has failed to purposefully incorporate customary and indigenous governance into sustainable development. In addressing this question, I examine the promise and failure of the implementation of sustainable development as seen through the work of Africa’s regional adjudicative institutions.