This special issue of GeoJournal: An International Journal of Human Geography and Environmental Sciences emerged from a series of sessions that I co-organized with one of the authors, Kwadwo Konadu-Agyemang of The University of Akron at the 99th annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, held in New Orleans, LA, March 5-8, 2003. The theme of the sessions was “Africa’s Development in the 21st Century: Pertinent issues, Opportunities and Challenges”. Although the presenters were not required to use any particular conceptual framework in their analysis, collectively the 18 papers that made up the sessions addressed the following questions with reference to Africa: What went wrong? What are the prospects of Africa moving beyond its current state of socio-economic and political development? Will the 21st century be any different? What are the opportunities for development? What are the constraints? Three of the papers in this issue (Otiso, Yeboah, and Amissah-Arthur) were first presented at these sessions, one paper (Konadu-Agyeman & Shabaya) emerged partly from the sessions, and the other one paper (Hanson), although presented at that meeting, was not as part of the sessions.