Short description:

The proposed edited volume surveys how current local governance policies and development strategies across Africa and the Middle east are advancing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Morocco's recent experience with local development strategies serves as starting point for the discussion (introductory chapter). Over the past decade, Morocco has undertaken a variety of initiatives aimed at reducing poverty and social inequalities and providing essential services to marginalized communities. These initiatives provide great opportunities to reshape the spatial organization of regions, and to address chronic local issues of infrastructure and investment. Local governance is the most direct way of providing basic services to populations, helping to alleviate socio-spatial inequalities. Also, it is and will continue to be the best way to engage people and local governments in economic, social and human development agendas. However, placing local governance at the heart of development strategies requires going well beyond participatory approaches to policy making. Local communities and their governments need to be empowered. As responses to the Covid19 epidemic have laid bare, new and more efficient modes of territorial governance are needed at local and regional levels if current global-scale challenges are to be met.

While development and governance strategies like Morocco's are framed by global agreements and standards, there is a need to understand them at the regional scale. Are there discernible patterns in how African and Middle Eastern countries design and implement them? This volume will assemble case studies from across the region, allowing for understandings that transcend the usual spatial dichotomies between "North" and "Sub-Saharan" Africa and the "Anglophone" and "Francophone" spheres.

The proposed volume builds upon an international conference on the topic held at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco (11-13 Feb. 2022, held on-line due to Covid restrictions). 22 participants, including both scholars and practitioners, presented at the conference. Nine of these contributions will be included as chapters in the volume, with a few additional chapters being solicited from researchers who did not attend.

The volume is aimed at a readership of researchers and development practitioners, and will be of most direct benefit to advanced undergraduate and graduate-level students.

Long description:

This edited volume surveys how current local governance policies and development strategies across Africa and the Middle east are advancing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Morocco's recent experience with local development strategies serves as starting point for the discussion. Over the past decade, Morocco has undertaken a variety of initiatives aimed at reducing poverty and social inequalities and providing essential services to marginalized communities. These initiatives provide great opportunities to reshape the spatial organization of regions, and to address chronic local issues of infrastructure and investment. Local governance is the most direct way of providing basic services to populations, helping to alleviate socio-spatial inequalities. Also, it is and will continue to be the best way to engage people and local governments in economic, social and human development agendas. However, placing local governance at the heart of development strategies requires going well beyond participatory approaches to policy making. Local communities and their governments need to be empowered. As responses to the Covid19 epidemic have laid bare, new and more efficient modes of territorial governance are needed at local and regional levels if current global-scale challenges are to be met.

While development and governance strategies like Morocco's are framed by global agreements and standards, there is a need to understand them at the regional scale. Are there discernible patterns in how African and Middle Eastern countries design and implement them? This volume assembles case studies from across the region, allowing for understandings that transcend the usual spatial dichotomies between "North" and "Sub-Saharan" Africa, between Africa and the Middle East, and between the "Anglophone" and  "Francophone" spheres.

The volume builds upon an international conference on the topic held at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco Morocco in February of 2022.

The volume is aimed at a readership of researchers and development practitioners, and will be of most direct benefit to advanced undergraduate and graduate-level students.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction: Governance and Local Development across Africa and the Middle East. (Khadija Darmame & Eric Ross).- 2. Urban law and resilience challenges of climate change for the MENA region (Robert Home).- 3. Housing provision in poor communities in Ghana, the role of non-state actors (Esther Danso-Wiredu).- 4. An Illustrative model of (non-)local governance: Morocco's coastal zone (Samira Idllal?ne).- 5. International standards, an innovation in urban governance? Reflection on urban development in Conakry (Pascal Rey & Margot Petitpierre).- 6. Mining and the local dynamics of Territorial governance in Southeast Morocco (Karen Rignall, Atman Aoui & Moulay Ahmed el Amrani).- 7. Securing women?s housing, land and property rights in post-conflict Syria (Mohamed Ekbal Ezzedeen Anak & Robert Home).- 8. In search of a Moroccan model for regionalization and territorial competitively (El-Hassan Far-Hat).- 9. The development activities of local governments in Tunisia (Mohamed El-Mensi).-10. Casablanca, a metropolis in search of an efficient system of governance (Abdelkader Kaioua & Khadija Darmame).- 11. Women and urban governance in the Arab World: the Egyptian case (Safae Monqid).- (The precise order of the chapters has yet to be determined by the co-editors).