Introduction

Development challenges, such as underdevelopment, poverty, inequality, unemployment, and conflict confronting Africa require different role-players in the government sector, academics, non-governmental sector, corporate sector, and multinational aid organisations to come together and join forces with the sole purpose of bringing an end to them once and for all. From an academic perspective, a multidisciplinary and convivial approach with a touch of pragmatism can help yield solutions even from fields that are rarely the subject of inquiry when development and social change issues facing the continent are discussed. Instead of focusing on the outcomes, successes, or even failures of development and social change planning at large, which is the usual position taken by most scholars seeking to find solutions to development challenges in Africa, we argue that there is a need to focus on the facilitative nature of communication based on the assumption that there can never be any development and social change process that involves human beings without some form of communicative interaction, engagement, discussion, or dialogue (see Molale, 2021). Based on this premise, we approach the debate around development and social change in Africa from the domains of Strategic Communication Management and Participatory Communication.