I took part in a confernce in Berlin on November 6-7 with Global Change Mates and Partnership with Africa Foundation on open culture as a tool for doing development differently. More here.
Power centres are moving, budgets are cut, new technologies provide new options while new actors like China and India are entering Africa. The Sustainable Development Goals look good on paper, but the the real hard work here is not to inform Africans what the goals are about, but about making the Western world accept they have to live for less, on less space, pollute less. Hence, international development actors who operate in Africa need to rethink the way they work to stay relevant. To Africa, but to citizens in Europe, too.
And there are in fact alternatives to the ways we see donors and big, international NGOs
operate. Actors who talk a lot about the change they make, while at the same time being so reluctant to change themselves.
Not that the answers are clear, but there were people willing to debate.