**1. Introduction**

The African continent has been endowed with immense natural and human resources. In addition, she has a huge inherent capital in terms of cultural,

economic, ecological, and natural diversity. Nevertheless, conditions of progress and development across Africa remain weak, with a current poverty rate of 43% and with 27 of the 28 poorest countries in the world in sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, poverty rates in many countries have fallen dramatically, but the story is the reverse in many African countries [1]. That this obtains despite more than six decades of development interventions by multilateral institutions like the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), national and international development agencies such as the United States Agency for International Development (US AID), the German Development Agency (GIZ), and the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID), as well as regional agencies and institutions like the African Development Bank (ADB) and the African Union (AU), speaks to the ineffectiveness and inadequacy of current development models and practices and calls for a radical rethinking of the approach.

Most African countries began to emerge from their colonial pasts, beginning in the 1950s and 1960s. At the time of independence, there was a great deal of hope and expectation for rapid improvements in the quality and condition of life in these former colonies, colonies that had been plundered and looted for material resources, natural wealth, and human capital for over three centuries. Yet, after over half a century of development assistance and intervention, the social, development, and public health indicators across Africa are lacking. Millions of African citizens, from Gambia in the west to Somalia in the east, from Tunisia in the north to South Africa in the south, remain mired in poverty and underdevelopment, with no or limited access to clean water, electricity, safe and affordable food, accessible and available healthcare, and broadband or even limited Internet connectivity, not to mention a critical shortfall in infrastructure for education, healthcare, transportation, communication, and finance. This challenging reality on the ground was the driver for the first Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were eight development goals set following the Millennium UN Summit of 2000 [2]. By 2015, most of these goals remained unmet, at least to the level and degree to have real impact. The MDGs later transmogrified into the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs). The SDGs outline and articulate what is needed across the various sectors, such as water, sanitation, and health, in terms of the development that is critical to achieve some measure of equity, justice, and sustainability across countries and the planet. The SDGs are a universal call to action to end poverty and ensure that *all* people enjoy a life of peace and prosperity, while protecting the planet and preserving its capacity to continue to support future generations of humanity.

The SDGs are comprehensive and encompass all aspects of what are needed for our species to be considered peaceful, prosperous, and flourishing. Although the SDGs are numbered, there is no particular ranking, and all are considered critically important. Specifically, the SDGs call for an end to poverty and hunger and good health and high well-being for all. This includes quality education, gender equality, clean water, sanitation, affordable and clean energy, and decent work accompanied by economic growth. These are goals that can be concretely measured in terms of achievement, such as what percentage of a population has access to clean water, sanitary sewer systems, and electricity, for example. Additional SDGs are broader and more aspirational, such as building capacity in industry, innovation and infrastructure, reduction of inequalities, transformations to sustainable cities and communities, responsible production and consumption, and climate action to mitigate climate change impacts. The last four SDGs are even broader as well as much more general, speaking more to policy development perspectives, such as addressing life below water, life on land, building peace, expanding justice, and building strong institutions. The final SDG focused on building the partnerships that will

**71**

*The Songhai Agroecological Sustainable Development Model: Synergy, Symbiosis, Collaboration…*

The fact that there is a continuing need for articulation of these basic development goals close to the dawn of the third decade of the twenty-first century speaks volumes about the failure of conventional development models. These models, implemented by multilateral institutions and Global North national development agencies since the end of the colonial era and the dawn of independence in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and other former island colonies, have failed to deliver. If we take 1960 as an arbitrary baseline, since many former colonies saw their independence around that time (plus or minus around 10 – 15 years) and we track development as measured by various indices forward through time, we will see that most indicators have risen slowly, some not at all, while others have changed dramatically. Clear measures of this "progress," after more than half a century of development actions and interventions, would be the percentages of the population that live below the poverty line, have access to clean water, have access to improved and sewer-based sanitation, and have access to electricity. We can pick a country from any of the colonized continents—Asia, Africa, and Latin America—and track the change in these indicators, using that as a prima facie measure of the success of development and growth policies from independence forward, under the interven-

An alternate approach could be to focus on well-being, referencing development

to baseline conditions necessary for societal flourishing as posited by Verharen et al. [3, 4] in their *survival ethics* model. This model articulates the critical utilities, services, and infrastructure that are essential and necessary, from moral and ethical to biogeochemical and physical perspectives, to support a society to actually flourish. At the basic physical level, we need air, water, shelter, food, and clothing. To be meaningfully sustainable, this would have to be *clean* air; *clean and safe* water; available, *accessible, and safe* food; *temperature-controlled* shelter; and *sustainably renewable* energy. One would have imagined, given the scale and overabundance of resources available in the Global North, that 50 years of interventionist development, under the direction of multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the United States Agency for International Development (US AID), would have ensured that these minimum requirements for a healthy life would, by now, have easily been met across the planet. After all, none of these services require advanced technologies, and practically the entire population in the developed world has access to all. The story in the Global South is quite different. In the Global South, by 2015, there still are close to a billion humans—844 million—who do not have access to an improved drinking water source [5, 6]. Although the world apparently made "tremendous progress" in meeting the millennial development goal (MDG) of halving the number of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water by 2015, 5 years "ahead of schedule" in 2010, many of the "improved" drinking water sources do not consistently, reliably, and reproducibly provide safe and potable water, resulting in as many as 2

billion people not having really reliable access to clean potable water.

The situation with sanitation, the other end of the clean water spectrum, is even worse. Over two and a half billion people, practically every third person on this planet, do not have access to improved sanitation [5, 6]. Needless to say, it is

be critically necessary for our civilization and species to meet all these SDGs, especially given how far removed we are, from a global and planetary perspective, from actually addressing and meeting all the SDGs. Given the current state of global geopolitical dysfunction, with the rise of authoritarian governments and regimes that promote privatization, deregulation, and unrestricted access to capital's exploitation of natural resources, as well as the already much degraded condition of our geography and geophysical environment, *whether the SDGs are even close to being* 

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.87929*

*attainable remains a serious and substantive question*.

tion of traditional aid and development agencies.

#### *The Songhai Agroecological Sustainable Development Model: Synergy, Symbiosis, Collaboration… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.87929*

be critically necessary for our civilization and species to meet all these SDGs, especially given how far removed we are, from a global and planetary perspective, from actually addressing and meeting all the SDGs. Given the current state of global geopolitical dysfunction, with the rise of authoritarian governments and regimes that promote privatization, deregulation, and unrestricted access to capital's exploitation of natural resources, as well as the already much degraded condition of our geography and geophysical environment, *whether the SDGs are even close to being attainable remains a serious and substantive question*.

The fact that there is a continuing need for articulation of these basic development goals close to the dawn of the third decade of the twenty-first century speaks volumes about the failure of conventional development models. These models, implemented by multilateral institutions and Global North national development agencies since the end of the colonial era and the dawn of independence in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and other former island colonies, have failed to deliver. If we take 1960 as an arbitrary baseline, since many former colonies saw their independence around that time (plus or minus around 10 – 15 years) and we track development as measured by various indices forward through time, we will see that most indicators have risen slowly, some not at all, while others have changed dramatically. Clear measures of this "progress," after more than half a century of development actions and interventions, would be the percentages of the population that live below the poverty line, have access to clean water, have access to improved and sewer-based sanitation, and have access to electricity. We can pick a country from any of the colonized continents—Asia, Africa, and Latin America—and track the change in these indicators, using that as a prima facie measure of the success of development and growth policies from independence forward, under the intervention of traditional aid and development agencies.

An alternate approach could be to focus on well-being, referencing development to baseline conditions necessary for societal flourishing as posited by Verharen et al. [3, 4] in their *survival ethics* model. This model articulates the critical utilities, services, and infrastructure that are essential and necessary, from moral and ethical to biogeochemical and physical perspectives, to support a society to actually flourish. At the basic physical level, we need air, water, shelter, food, and clothing. To be meaningfully sustainable, this would have to be *clean* air; *clean and safe* water; available, *accessible, and safe* food; *temperature-controlled* shelter; and *sustainably renewable* energy. One would have imagined, given the scale and overabundance of resources available in the Global North, that 50 years of interventionist development, under the direction of multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the United States Agency for International Development (US AID), would have ensured that these minimum requirements for a healthy life would, by now, have easily been met across the planet. After all, none of these services require advanced technologies, and practically the entire population in the developed world has access to all. The story in the Global South is quite different. In the Global South, by 2015, there still are close to a billion humans—844 million—who do not have access to an improved drinking water source [5, 6]. Although the world apparently made "tremendous progress" in meeting the millennial development goal (MDG) of halving the number of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water by 2015, 5 years "ahead of schedule" in 2010, many of the "improved" drinking water sources do not consistently, reliably, and reproducibly provide safe and potable water, resulting in as many as 2 billion people not having really reliable access to clean potable water.

The situation with sanitation, the other end of the clean water spectrum, is even worse. Over two and a half billion people, practically every third person on this planet, do not have access to improved sanitation [5, 6]. Needless to say, it is

*Regional Development in Africa*

radical rethinking of the approach.

to continue to support future generations of humanity.

economic, ecological, and natural diversity. Nevertheless, conditions of progress and development across Africa remain weak, with a current poverty rate of 43% and with 27 of the 28 poorest countries in the world in sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, poverty rates in many countries have fallen dramatically, but the story is the reverse in many African countries [1]. That this obtains despite more than six decades of development interventions by multilateral institutions like the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), national and international development agencies such as the United States Agency for International Development (US AID), the German Development

Agency (GIZ), and the United Kingdom's Department for International

Development (DFID), as well as regional agencies and institutions like the African Development Bank (ADB) and the African Union (AU), speaks to the ineffectiveness and inadequacy of current development models and practices and calls for a

Most African countries began to emerge from their colonial pasts, beginning in the 1950s and 1960s. At the time of independence, there was a great deal of hope and expectation for rapid improvements in the quality and condition of life in these former colonies, colonies that had been plundered and looted for material resources, natural wealth, and human capital for over three centuries. Yet, after over half a century of development assistance and intervention, the social, development, and public health indicators across Africa are lacking. Millions of African citizens, from Gambia in the west to Somalia in the east, from Tunisia in the north to South Africa in the south, remain mired in poverty and underdevelopment, with no or limited access to clean water, electricity, safe and affordable food, accessible and available healthcare, and broadband or even limited Internet connectivity, not to mention a critical shortfall in infrastructure for education, healthcare, transportation, communication, and finance. This challenging reality on the ground was the driver for the first Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were eight development goals set following the Millennium UN Summit of 2000 [2]. By 2015, most of these goals remained unmet, at least to the level and degree to have real impact. The MDGs later transmogrified into the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs). The SDGs outline and articulate what is needed across the various sectors, such as water, sanitation, and health, in terms of the development that is critical to achieve some measure of equity, justice, and sustainability across countries and the planet. The SDGs are a universal call to action to end poverty and ensure that *all* people enjoy a life of peace and prosperity, while protecting the planet and preserving its capacity

The SDGs are comprehensive and encompass all aspects of what are needed for our species to be considered peaceful, prosperous, and flourishing. Although the SDGs are numbered, there is no particular ranking, and all are considered critically important. Specifically, the SDGs call for an end to poverty and hunger and good health and high well-being for all. This includes quality education, gender equality, clean water, sanitation, affordable and clean energy, and decent work accompanied by economic growth. These are goals that can be concretely measured in terms of achievement, such as what percentage of a population has access to clean water, sanitary sewer systems, and electricity, for example. Additional SDGs are broader and more aspirational, such as building capacity in industry, innovation and infrastructure, reduction of inequalities, transformations to sustainable cities and communities, responsible production and consumption, and climate action to mitigate climate change impacts. The last four SDGs are even broader as well as much more general, speaking more to policy development perspectives, such as addressing life below water, life on land, building peace, expanding justice, and building strong institutions. The final SDG focused on building the partnerships that will

**70**

most likely that those without access to an improved water source are likely also to lack access to improved sanitation. The consequences of the unavailability of these two critical needs are evinced in numerous diverse negative ways: an estimated 801,000 children younger than 5 years of age perish from diarrhea each year, mostly in developing countries, or about 2200 children are dying everyday as a result of (preventable) diarrheal diseases [7]; worldwide, millions of people are infected with neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), many of which are water- and/or hygienerelated, such as *Guinea worm disease*, *Buruli ulcer*, *trachoma*, and *schistosomiasis*, and are found in places with unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation [8]. Clearly, the impact of clean water technologies on public health has a high rate of return, reducing morbidity from diarrhea and other water-borne diseases [9, 10].

In terms of food, close to 800 million people do not have sufficient food to lead a healthy, active life, while over a third of produced and processed food is wasted! Needless to say, the vast majority of the hungry live in developing countries, where as many as one in eight people are undernourished and hence unable to flourish. Two thirds of these are from Asia, and, while the percentage in southern Asia has reduced, an increase has also seen in recent years in western Asia, due to conflict and war. The negative impact of lack of food is profound: nearly half of deaths in children under 5, almost 3.1 million a year, are a direct result of poor nutrition. More than 100 million children in developing countries are underweight, and one in four of the world's children are stunted [11].

Over 1.6 billion people, almost one out of every four, on this planet lack adequate housing and shelter as estimated by Habitat for Humanity, while there are over 150 million people in the world who are completely homeless. India has the most homeless people in the world with almost 70 million homeless, while another 170 million are "almost homeless." The tenuous and shaky, literally, nature of the housing of those with inadequate shelter puts these individuals and families at high risk of being added to the roll of homeless, potentially dramatically increasing the level of homelessness on our planet [12].

Nearly 1.1 billion people had no access to electricity in 2014, and more than 3 billion had no access to clean fuels and clean fuel cookstove technologies, despite the fact that these technologies have been widely researched, developed, and promulgated with numerous alternative designs developed and implemented in terms of cookstove design and fuel type being promoted by numerous development agencies and NGOs. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 recognizes that extending access to electricity and other forms of energy is fundamental to improving people's lives and communities. As recently as 2016, only 10% of the energy consumed on the planet was coming from renewable and sustainable sources such as wind and solar energy [13].

Now, in the globalized world of the twenty-first century, access to the Internet and the World Wide Web of information and communication has become a basic need that is critically necessary to build community capacity. However, only about half of the world's population is online. There are about 4.4 billion people with access to the Internet and World Wide Web, bringing the percentage of people with Internet access above the 50% mark. And as in the areas of water, sanitation, shelter, and energy, there are enormous discrepancies in terms of access, speed of connection, bandwidth, and quality of access. In the developed world, over 80% of people have broadband Internet access, while in the developing world, it is closer to half or just over 50% of people with Internet access. This does not drill down into the speed and bandwidth available. In the most connected country on earth with the highest number of Internet users, China with over 750 million users still has more than 40% of the population unconnected. In India, with almost 700 million Internet users, almost half of the population has no Internet connection [14].

**73**

corporate partners.

*The Songhai Agroecological Sustainable Development Model: Synergy, Symbiosis, Collaboration…*

For now, focusing on the very basic needs of water and sanitation, it is evident that, after 50 years of conventional interventionist development, a billion people are still left without access to reliable clean potable water, whether by way of decentralized or centralized water collection, treatment, and distribution piping systems. Even more telling, two and a half billion people are still without access to sanitation and the sanitary removal and disposal of human waste. The fact that these numbers across Africa are even lower speaks to the need for a different approach, one that will engage and empower communities and result in tangible community-centered

This is where the Songhai Center and the agroecological approach [15, 16] provide a radical rethinking of the conventional top-down, external agency-supported development practices of the twentieth century. The Songhai approach involves integrated and community-based sustainable technology research, development, implementation, transfer, and dispersion. This model forms the structural and existential fabric of the Songhai approach to development. This is where the three Rs of the twentieth century, limited to reduce, reuse, and recycle, have effectively, holistically, and successfully been expanded to a true twenty-first century model of multiple Rs, incorporating *r*espect for the environment, *r*adical *r*ethinking of our approach, and an ethos of *r*ecovery where waste is *r*econceptualized as *r*esource and

What we will here call the Songhai approach is self-defined and identified as a rural growth initiative than that is an alternative sustainable development model that promulgated by multilateral aid and development agencies which tend to be a top-down interventionist and have, at best, simply failed at achieving development targets and, at worst, resulted in actual underdevelopment and increased dependency [17]. The development focus and attention in decolonizing Africa were on the maintenance and expansion of the infrastructure that would enable newly independent African nations to grow, harvest, and transport fresh agricultural produce or extract, transport, and export raw mineral resources, the processing and value addition to both (agricultural produce and mineral resources) of which would occur in the industrialized Global North. The development that took place in the former colonies, as well as the infrastructure that was put in place, ensured that this export of raw materials and agricultural produce would be maintained and expanded. The long-term result of that focus has been the impoverishment of many African nations, brought about by the depletion of resources, the transformation to monoculture cash crops, and the wanton, unrestricted, and unregulated exploitation and extraction of resources, enabled through the corrupt and undemocratic regimes that enriched themselves at the cost of national development through these regime collusions with former colonial governments and their multinational

Multilateral and international aid agencies tend to view poverty as a symptom that can be treated through some directed intervention, whether that intervention is focused on providing clean water through the installation of a pump or the establishment of a rural health clinic and expecting these directed and very often uncoordinated interventions to result in fundamental change that has at its core the empowerment of communities through the integrated development of the community's capacities and capabilities. The Songhai analysis sees the succumbing of Africa to the logic of poverty and underdevelopment caused by the loss of internal, some would argue organic, capacity "…to build the appropriate institutions

development, capacitation, and urgent addressing of all these basic needs.

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.87929*

**2. The Songhai approach**

a true circular economy becomes possible.

*The Songhai Agroecological Sustainable Development Model: Synergy, Symbiosis, Collaboration… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.87929*

For now, focusing on the very basic needs of water and sanitation, it is evident that, after 50 years of conventional interventionist development, a billion people are still left without access to reliable clean potable water, whether by way of decentralized or centralized water collection, treatment, and distribution piping systems. Even more telling, two and a half billion people are still without access to sanitation and the sanitary removal and disposal of human waste. The fact that these numbers across Africa are even lower speaks to the need for a different approach, one that will engage and empower communities and result in tangible community-centered development, capacitation, and urgent addressing of all these basic needs.
