Commission for Africa

Documents to download:

• A useful background paper can be found on the ODI's website and more information can be found on http://www.odi.org.uk/AfricaConsultation/index.html.

• Matthew Lockwood's notes here

• Matthew Lockwood's presentation here

• a summary of the session by Simon Maxwell
  

The DSA Conference comes at a particularly useful time for us to make an input into the thinking of the Africa Commission.  The Commission held its second meeting in Addis Ababa in early October and is beginning to focus on concrete issues and recommendations.  There is a wealth of material available on the website (http://213.225.140.43/) including the results of consultations with UK civil society and African think-tanks and research organisations.

There will be two speakers at the meeting.  The work of the Commission will be introduced by the Head of its Secretariat, Myles Wickstead.  Myles is well-known to many DSA members, as the senior DFID official responsible for the first White Paper in 1997, as the DFID person in Washington and, more recently, as UK ambassador to Ethiopia.  The discussant will be Matthew Lockwood, formerly of the University of Sussex and the Young Lives project, and until the end of September, ActionAid's Head of Policy and Advocacy.  Matthew is leaving development to work on UK carbon emissions and promises some radical views on the development project in Africa.