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.

Autorentext

Khadija Darmame is an assistant professor of Geography at the School of Humanities and Social Science, Al Akhawayn University of Ifrane. She has more than 20 years of professional and academic experience working on MENA region development challenges, with a focus on local development, public policy, reform of urban services, and civil society involvement. She developed a solid multi-disciplinary background in the field as well as a deep familiarity with Arab/European contexts. Dr. Darmame is also involved in establishing academic and consulting networks in the MENA region, Europe and Gulf. She works to connect various development cooperation organizations and academic institutions in the area of socio-empirical research linked to human development. Darmame has published articles in academic journals such as Habitat International, and has authored chapters in four edited volumes with such publishers as Cambridge University Press.

Eric Ross is an urban and cultural geographer whose research focuses on Muslim Africa. He holds a B.Sc and an M.Sc in Geography from Université du Québec à Montréal, and a Ph.D in Islamic Studies from McGill University. Ross has conducted research on Sufism and urbanization in Senegal as well as on cultural heritage and development in Morocco. Ross has published articles in academic journals such as Urban Studies and Planning Perspectives, has authored chapters in 15 edited volumes with such publishers as E.J. Brill, Routledge, de Gruyter, and Karthala. Among these are Land issues for Urban Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa (edited by Robert Home) published by Springer. Ross also co-authored Grid Planning in the Urban Design Practices of Senegal, also published by Springer, and has written entries for specialized encyclopedias. Ross has been teaching a variety of geography and methodology courses at Al Akhawayn University since 1998.