People-centered development: Why the policy priorities and lived experiences of African citizens should matter for national development policy

Originally published on the Brookings.edu site. 

Development agenda setting is a key function of governments. But since the Millennium Declaration was adopted in 2000,1 national development agendas have been increasingly shaped by global and continental development policy frameworks, notably the United Nations (U.N.) Millennium Development Goals and their successor, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as the African Union (AU) Agenda 2063. As governments seek to align their national development priorities with global and continental frameworks in order to facilitate tracking, reporting, and accountability, we argue that a critical place to start should be citizens’ policy priorities and lived experiences. Peoplecentered development—inclusive growth and sustainable development that “leaves no one behind”—must be at the core of both national development agendas and the international development frameworks to which governments collectively commit.2 What are the policy priorities of African citizens, and how have these changed over time? How do people assess the performance of their governments on their priority issues? We draw from recent survey data from Afrobarometer to point policymakers toward critical inputs for their agenda setting.