National Strategies for Sustainable Development (NSSDs) in Africa: a sixteen country review

Major global conferences and summits have called on countries to prepare and implement National Strategies for Sustainable Development (NSSDs). These include the United ations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), in 1992 and the five-year review of UNCED (Rio+5), in 1997. The target set by the World Summit on sustainable development (WSSD) in 2002, for countries to take immediate steps to advance in the formulation and elaboration of NSSDs and to begin their implementation by 2005, was the latest in a series of such calls. Therefore, this review was conducted in order to assess the extent to which African countries have progressed with regard to meeting the WSSD target on the NSSD process. The report complements available resources on the sustainable development strategic process. It provides an assessment of the level of development and implementation of NSSDs in African countries and documents experiences, including good practices and lessons learned in the NSSD process. The intent is to promote knowledge networking among countries and to deepen the learning and implementation process. The review entailed 16 countries, namely: Algeria, Benin, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, The Gambia, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia.