A child holds a pen as children play at a primary school in Burundi: access to education has improved but other challenges remain.
Reuters/Thomas Mukoya
It is more important than ever that the locus of control of education development is driven by African public intellectuals who can speak truth to power
Women in Central African Republic wait for vaccinations.
Pierre Holtz for UNICEF
An index developed to gauge progress towards the sustainable development goals and their targets shows that nine of the world’s worst performing countries are in Africa.
Donatien Beguy, African Population and Health Research Center
The truth is that data in Africa are not produced on time, not frequently enough, are of poor quality and aren’t accurate. This makes it difficult to make data driven decisions.
Mega development projects can have a positive impact. But there are risks. Between 2004 and 2013, some 3.4 million people were ‘physically and economically displaced’ by World Bank projects alone.
Professor Amivi Kafui Tete-Benissan (left) teaches cell biology and biochemistry at the University of Lomé, in the capital of Togo.
Stephan Gladieu/World Bank/Flickr
Getting more women into science, technology, engineering and maths fields is a process that involves many parts of a society. Several African countries are setting the pace.
Tanzanian children are kept out of school for a number of reasons.
James Akena/Reuters
Child labour in Tanzania is driven largely by poverty. More must be done to keep children in school so their skills aren’t lost to the economy in the long run.
Even something as simple as a water pump might not work if it requires parts or power not readily available where it’s installed.
World Bank
Much international aid fails to achieve its ends because the technology employed is not “appropriate” to its intended environment or culture. This needs to change.
Sustainable development is one of the priorities of Nigeria’s new government. This is an opportunity to combat problems detrimental to the country’s economy and ecosystems.
Violence has become a normal part of life in Somalia and some other countries.
Reuters/Feisal Omar
A growing field of policy analysis now focuses on reducing armed violence. Remarkable consensus has emerged at high policy levels around the basic elements of an approach to reduce violence.
Poor sanitation leads to diseases like malnutrition and stunted growth in children. It also makes them sick and unable to attend school.
Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters
Africa faces the monumental task of reducing its maternal deaths by three-quarters if it is to meet the Sustainable Development Goals around maternal mortality.
The aim of the sole sustainable development goal on health is to improve health and well-being.
Reuters/Luc Gnago
Erica Penfold, South African Institute of International Affairs
In the region, the Southern African Development Community will have a critical role to ensure the targets of the sustainable development goals are met over the next 15 years.
Forget the millenium goals, there’s a new plan on the table.
United Nations
Global leaders are signing up to an ambitious agenda in New York.
The Sustainable Development Goals include targets to end child marriages and female genital mutilation. Tahani (in pink) married when she was 6 - nearly half of all women in Yemen were married as children.
Stephanie Sinclair/VII Agency/EPA
James Whitmore, The Conversation and Emil Jeyaratnam, The Conversation
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals explained in charts.
Improving maternal mortality and ending preventable deaths in children are some of the health targets in the Sustainable Development Goals.
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade/Flickr
Health has secured its place as one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. But without clear mechanisms to report, finance or engage other sectors, could more end up as less?
Michael Otieno, a pharmacist, dispenses anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs at a hospital in Nairobi, Kenya. Among the new sustainable development goals is promoting mental health and well being and achieving universal health care.
Reuters/Thomas Mukoya
Erica Penfold, South African Institute of International Affairs
The sustainable development goals will be ratified by the United Nations next week but there are a few lessons it should learn from the failed millennium development goals.