The effects of aid dependency on preventing the achievement of sustainable development in Africa has not been given appropriate academic attention. Aid dependency in Africa is undoubtedly among the most factors that have promoted poverty and underdevelopment. Aid dependency which hindered the growth of local innovation, promoted divisions that has affected good governance for sustainable development. Aid dependency has promoted chronic poverty, mental laziness and unstable health and well-being. It has ignited unhealthy condition that has created a perpetual vicious cycle of poverty that prevents the achievement of sustainable development. The study found that planning diplomacy can serve as a solution to aid diplomacy and address its effects thus promoting the achievement of sustainable development. Planning diplomacy was found to have critical links with Africa’s communalism theory, thus making it an ideal approach to addressing the effects of aid dependency in Africa. Planning diplomacy was found to promote local and business in collective manner. It is through this collective approach that sustainable development can be achieved in Africa. Planning diplomacy was found a key for sustainable development because it makes good use of foreign aids, promotes local ownership thus strengthens sustainable economic growth and development that makes sustainable development achievable. Planning diplomacy was equally found a remedy to aid dependency because it enhances knowledge and skills transfer. Knowledge and skills transfer promotes sustainable development because it facilitates sharing of skills that brings innovation and technologies to local citizens in a collective manner. The study adopted a qualitative research methodology with the use of secondary data collected from existing literature published in the public domain. Collected data was analysed and interpreted through document analysis technique.   

Qatar FIFA 2022 was the first FIFA Football World Cup to be hosted by an Arab state and was predicted by some to fail. However, it did not only succeed but also showed a new display of destination sustainability upon hosting mega-sport events and linked tourism. Yet, some impacts tend to be long-term and need further analysis. The study aims to understand both positive and negative impacts on destination sustainability resulting from hosting mega-sport events, using bibliometric analysis of published literature during the last forty-seven years, and reflecting on the recent World Cup 2022 tournament in Qatar. A total of 2519 sources containing 665 open-access articles with 10,523 citations were found using the keywords “sport tourism” and “mega-sport”. The study found various literature researching the economic impacts in-depth, less on environmental impacts, and much less on social and cultural impacts on host communities. Debates exist in the literature concerning presumed economic benefits and motivations for hosting, and less on actual results achieved. Although World Cup 2022 is considered the most expensive among previous versions, destination sustainability seems to have benefited from the event’s hosting. Socio-cultural impacts of hosting mega-sport events seem to be addressed to an extent in the Qatar version of the World Cup, as well as environmental impacts while creating a unique image for FIFA 2022 and the destination itself. FIFA showcased this as using carbon-neutral technologies to create the micro-climate including perforated walls in the eight state-of-the-art stadiums, with the incorporation of a circular modular design for energy and water efficiency and zero-waste deconstruction post-event. The global event also drew attention and respect to the local community and underprivileged groups such as people with disabilities. Further research is needed to understand the demand-side perspective including the local community of Qatar and the event’s participants, and to analyze the long-term impacts and lessons learned from the Qatari experience.

In regard to national development (ND), this review article (which is basically a perspective approach) presents retroactive and forward-looking perspectives on university education in Nigeria. In the past, particularly during the 1970s, the Nigerian university (NU) sector was among the most outstanding in Africa as well as globally. The best institutions drew students from around Africa, who flocked to Nigeria to study. The NU structure evidently contained four essential components for an international and effective university system, viz., world-class instructors, world-class students, a conducive learning environment, and global competitiveness. The NU structure, nevertheless, has undergone some neglect over the past thirty years and lost its distinctive identity, which raises questions about its function and applicability at the current stage of ND. Hence, some retrospective and forward-looking observations on university education in Nigeria in connection to ND are conveyed in this perspective article uses basically published articles and other relevant literature, as well as other sources and data from available literature. Hitherto, there is an urgent need for reinforcement of the university system in order to give it the desired and comparable international quality and functionality needed to meet the demands of current issues and the near future. However, this article conveys an intense belief and conviction that the NU system is still important for both the political and socioeconomic development (growth) of the nation. The article concludes by recommending the way forward in this regard.

This study examines the spatial distribution of consumption competitiveness and carrying capacity across regions, exploring their interrelationship and implications for sustainable regional development. An evaluation index system is constructed for both consumption competitiveness and carrying capacity using a range of economic, social, and environmental indicators. We apply this framework to regional data in China and analyze the resultant spatial patterns. The findings reveal significant regional disparities: areas with strong consumption competitiveness are often concentrated in economically developed regions, while high carrying capacity is notable in less populated or resource-rich areas. Notably, a mismatch emerges in some regions—high consumer demand is not always supported by adequate carrying capacity, and vice versa. These disparities highlight potential sustainability challenges and opportunities. In the discussion, we address reasons behind the spatial mismatch and propose policy implications to better align consumer market growth with regional resource and environmental capacity. The paper concludes that integrating consumption-driven growth strategies with carrying capacity considerations is essential for balanced and sustainable regional development.

While infrastructure provides necessary public services and is vital for the socio-economic development of a nation, public funds alone cannot finance all infrastructure needs in society, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, where many countries are facing budget deficits. Although private financing schemes, such as public-private partnerships (PPPs) and land value capture, have been considered intensively, they have yet to produce adequate private capital flows to infrastructure projects due to a lack of incentives for private investors. Against the background, this paper proposes a new financing mechanism in which governments might divert some of the increased tax revenue from the spillover effects of newly constructed infrastructures to fund the private sector through grants or subsidies. The empirical work in Vietnam shows a significant increase in tax revenues after completing two expressways, supporting our idea about spillover effects, which includes small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) development. This study’s results suggest that spillover effects can bring new opportunities for governments and multilateral development banks (MDBs) to implement infrastructure projects with greater private sector involvement in the region. It also proposes some financial schemes, such as land capture and financing for business startups, including SMEs, to enhance the spillover effects of infrastructure.

The People's Republic of China (PRC) wants to become a key regional actor in the Arctic. PRC's underlying priority in the region is gaining access to commercial opportunities from trade and natural resources. To this end, PRC is building its domestic capacities for research and commercial development in the Arctic, increasing its involvement in multilateral forums on Arctic governance and deepening ties to Arctic nations, especially Russia.

Attitudes towards PRC among Arctic nations are diverging, but Beijing generally faces high levels of skepticism and opposition to its Arctic involvement, explicitly grounded in perceptions of PRC as a state undermining the rules-based international order and potential military build-up in the high north.

The analytical framework in this article builds on an outline authored by Exner-Pirot in 2012 (Exner-Pirot, 2012) to detail the current schools of thought within Arctic governance, and builds on it by including more recent developments in Arctic governance, incorporating the updated Arctic policies of most Arctic countries and connecting it to PRC.

This article contends that Beijing wants to change the status quo of Arctic governance and shift it towards a more accommodating approach to non-Arctic states. This article finds, based on the stated Arctic strategies of the eight Arctic states and PRC, that there are different views on Arctic governance where Arctic countries for the most part indicate an openness to a Chinese entry into the Arctic, albeit in diverging ways. This creates a complex governance scenario for PRC to navigate as it seeks to become a key Arctic player