Fredrik Söderbaum on Rethinking Development Cooperation with Africa in a Changing World

By sandra [dot] jakobsson [at] svet [dot] lu [dot] se (Sandra Jakobsson) - published 29 March 2023

During this year's inagural Africa Day, organised by Lund University, Fredrik Söderbaum was invited as keynote speaker. In addition to his speech, the conference also brought together researchers from Lund University who presented their ongoing work in Africa.

Fredrik Söderbaum is Professor in Peace and Development Research at the School of Global Studies (SGS) at university of Gothenburg. He is also a committee member of the Development Research School.

Last Monday, Söderbaum spoke at the Palaestra Hall under a speech titled "Rethinking Development Cooperation with Africa in a changing world" as keynote speaker at the LU Africa Day 2023. The day was organised by the LU Africa Strategy Group.

Söderbaum's presentation was divided in following five parts: Africa, Rethinking, Changing world, Development and Development Cooperation. From which he spoke of the aspects of "global development", in form of the Agenda 2030, and its many benefits and challenges, such as the creation of Agenda 2030 was thought of creating a uniformity and global consensus, but it also created unexpected challenges:

– The Agenda and its design is open-ended and leads to diversity and competition, Söderbaum described.

Fredrik Söderbaum speaking at Africa DAy 2023.

Further on, Söderbaum argued that it is possible to identify several partly competing approaches to development, such as the classical solidaristic aid-paradigm, a global public goods approach, and a recently a more geopolitical and nationalist development narrative which also has grown stronger.

From a Swedish perspective, Söderbaum spoke of the Swedish challenges in regards of development collaboration with Africa. One main obstable was described as the "Swedish confusion", which benames the different interpretations of either research for development, or development research, which affects the nature of the collaboration.

– But, perhaps more pressing are the new government’s drastic cuts in support to research. These cuts will drastically undermine research collaboration between Sweden and Africa, Söderbaum concluded.

The speech was then followed by a presentation by representatives from the LU Strategic platform and Global Dynamic Engagement for Africa. The conference was concluded by speed presentations from LU staff and PhD-students after a panel discussion on South-North collaboration in practice - challenges and possibilities.