"10 Ideas for Tomorrow's Africa" Competition

Within the framework of the 50th anniversary of African independence, the Social and Human Sciences Sector of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO - SHS) is launching a "Call for Ideas" for prospective proposals in favour of Africa’s development within the next decade. The 10 ideas selected will be presented by their authors during 10 small-scale conferences to be held at UNESCO Headquarters, in mid-June 2010. These 10 contributions to the thinking on Africa’s future will also be published in a special issue of SHSviews magazine.

Each proposal is expected to develop one idea which would amplify the positive effects and reduce, or contain, the negative impacts of the major trends observed in Africa on one of the 10 following topics:

• Topic 1: Economy and Development (Environment, Food Security, New Information and Communication Technologies…)
  
• Topic 2: Governance, Policy, Institutions, Leadership
  
• Topic 3: Regional Integration, Population, Migration, Urbanisation
  
• Topic 4: Cultural Identities (Languages, Religions…)
  
• Topic 5: Youth
  
• Topic 6: Human Rights, Gender, and Justice
  
• Topic 7: Diaspora
  
• Topic 8: Peace, Security, and Conflict
  
• Topic 9: Health, Education, and Social Development
  
• Topic 10: International Relations
  

In particular, each proposal should detail what the "change agent" could be which would amplify the positive effects of one or several known trends in the relevant field and which would be able to implement the supported idea.