Post-2015 development agenda: Value proposition for Physical Education in Africa

Abstract

In September 2000, leaders of all the world’s countries and leading development institutions resolved to work towards achieving eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, namely eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and develop a global partnership for development. Fourteen years later, efforts are intensifying globally not only to track, fast-track and contextualize progress towards achieving the MDGs, but to also identify themes and priorities that will shape the post-2015 development framework. The ongoing national and thematic consultations on the post-2015 development agenda being organized by the United Nations focus on eleven issues: inequalities, health, education, growth and employment, environmental sustainability, governance, conflict and fragility, population dynamics, hunger, food and nutrition security, energy, and water. Given their emphasis on health enhancement, both the 2015 MDGs and the post-2015 development themes have obvious implications for the overt and hidden physical education curricula. Less obvious are their implications for the moral and political philosophies of physical education in Africa in the context of postmodernity. Based on the Foucauldian notion that power exists in and through disciplinary discourses, this article seeks to stimulate debates on key normative questions and value proposition for physical education in Africa vis-à-vis the post-2015 global development agenda.

Keywords: Global, development, agenda, physical education.