Planning has been a key instrument in Africa’s quest for development since independence. Almost all African countries, irrespective of their dominant ideologies employed one type of planning or the other. Those aspiring for socialism like Algeria, Tanzania, Zambia or Guinea-Conakry opted for Soviet-style central planning. Others like Kenya, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Botswana followed the capitalist path that was also state-led and thus involved a high degree of planning.

Africa’s economic crises of the late seventies and eighties, and the subsequent intense donor pressure to liberalize and open-up its economies have led to an almost universal dumping of central planning. This issue of the bulletin examines various perspectives on how best to chart Africa’s future. A consistent thought that runs through all the articles is that planning is still an important part of the development process.

The authors acknowledge that the increasingly complex mix of factors, such as the strong influence of the global market, recession, unsustainability of centrally focused policies and planned economies that were not cognizant of the need to keep in step with the rapid pace of socioeconomic, scientific, technological and information changes made it clear that new courses, based on wider, more holistic, realistic visions of the future need to be charted out.

The articles all share insights about how current development planning needs to involve the private sector and civil society in formulating a shared national vision. Africa needs to proactively move to make these visions a reality. Crafting Africa’s Futures traces the evolution of a vision based plan and model for development which the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), African Development Bank (ADB) and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) agreed to support. Models and matrices are worked out that structure development work that is program rather than project oriented, and logically more sustainable.

Experiences from Zambia’s Public Policy Management and Strategic Planning, note that even though centrally planned economies haven’t worked and have become obsolete, strategic planning should continue to be part of development planning. Lessons from haphazardly decentralized planning show that micro planning through Planning divisions in Ministries does not easily become macro planning.

Planning in post independence Tanzania is documented from the Five Year Development Plans through to the Vision for Development 2025, the most recent document to chart out an organic vision for Tanzania’s development.

The jury however is still out on whether vision 2025 will succeed, where the Arusha Declaration of 1967 failed. Finally, readers are introduced to the win-win productivity cycle.

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