Wanted: Fresh ideas for combating African poverty

The Millennium Development Goals are likely to remain important for the long-term task of eradicating poverty beyond 2015. But development policy is being challenged by a host of new and old issues brought into focus by the quadruple crises of the past three years: the food, climate, energy and financial crises. The favourable global economic and political conditions that existed when the MDGs were adopted in 2000 do not exist anymore. The crises and their aftermaths therefore require us to “think out of the box,” to ask different questions and seek new ways of social and political mobilization to tackle the structural problems that perpetuate global inequalities.