The Commissioners responsible for this theme were Ji Peiding, William Kalema and Benjamin Mkapa.

The Commission's work on human development sought to determine ways of achieving the human and social conditions that people in Africa aspire to. A starting point for this was an analysis of the relative effectiveness of the many current initiatives in this area and an attempt to understand the underlying causes for this—what is working? Protecting the rights of women and children and recognising the far-reaching impacts of the HIV and AIDS pandemic was the foundation of this analysis. The analysis also recognised the movement of people—into cities and across borders. A key premise of work under this theme was how individuals have to be a part of the changes that are already happening and how those changes have to take account of individual aspirations. As such it was closely related to the work under the culture and participation theme.

The work of the theme began by exploring four key challenges in human development.

The first issue was how to stimulate the demand and supply of quality services such as health, education, and social protection, as well as material needs such as drinking water and sanitation. This raised questions around strengthening delivery systems through public sector reform and through different modalities for delivering these services. A fundamental question the Commission sought to address was how incentives could be created for good coordination of different agencies - local and international - in an appropriate integrated response.

The second issue concerned a set of questions around how to develop the right conditions for an inclusive and productive workforce. This included questions around capacity development, supporting economic migration, gender and ethnic equality in the workforce and other basic labour rights.

The third issue, fundamental to all others, was how to devise strategies to ensure the poor and excluded benefit, whether rural or urban. This meant explicitly asking how different ages, sexes, ethnic, religious groups, migrant workers or people in different locations are included in development processes.

The fourth issue was to examine how the voice of Africa in the international initiatives that see the poor as their clients could be increased so as to make them more appropriate, targeted and sustainable.

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