People Centred: The Journal of Development Administration
People Centred: The Journal of Development Administration is an international, biannual, peer-reviewed diamond open-access journal dedicated to advancing scholarship on development administration across Africa and the Global South. Published twice yearly, the journal provides a critical platform for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to engage with the realities of development practice through rigorous theoretical and empirical inquiry grounded in African contexts.
Print ISSN: 2218-4899
Online ISSN: 2788-8169
People Centred: The Journal of Development Administration is an international, biannual, peer-reviewed diamond open-access journal dedicated to advancing scholarship on development administration across Africa and the Global South. Published twice yearly, the journal provides a critical platform for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to engage with the realities of development practice through rigorous theoretical and empirical inquiry grounded in African contexts.
People Centred occupies a distinctive space in the African scholarly landscape, addressing a significant gap in development practice knowledge by offering a decolonising epistemology to development administration. The journal provides an essential venue for researchers and practitioners working at the intersection of governance, community development, and policy to share their scholarship with broader audiences. Each issue features 5–6 research articles, with contributions up to 5,000 words.
Established in 2016 by the Institute of Development Administration through the Africa Social Work and Development Network, the journal has maintained a consistent publishing record, producing at least two issues annually. People Centred is now published by Pluto Journals in partnership with African Books Collective and hosted on ScienceOpen’s open-access platform, expanding its reach to global audiences while maintaining its commitment to diamond open-access publishing. Indexed in DOAJ https://doaj.org/toc/2788-8169 and AJOL https://www.ajol.info/index.php/jda, the journal operates under a completely charge-free model, ensuring that research remains accessible to African scholars, practitioners, and readers without paywalls.
People Centred: The Journal of Development Administration provides a rigorous platform for scholarship that reflects the diversity and complexity of development practice across Africa and the Global South. The journal’s mission is to advance conceptual and theoretical engagement grounded in empirical research, foster dialogue between local and global development traditions, and provide scholars and practitioners with opportunities to contribute to disciplinary and policy conversations.
The journal carries research articles and commentary. We particularly welcome contributions that engage with African governance, public administration, and development policy contexts; develop theoretical frameworks emerging from African and Southern empirical realities; offer decolonising perspectives on development epistemology and practice; employ innovative methodologies appropriate to African research settings; address critical issues of inequality, social justice, and sustainable development; examine community-centred approaches to development administration; analyse institutional capacity, accountability, and public sector reform; investigate social work, welfare systems, and human development; and contribute to practice-relevant scholarship bridging research and policy.
People Centred stands out as a distinctive voice in African development scholarship, addressing a significant gap in development practice knowledge from a continent-grounded perspective. The journal provides essential space for researchers and practitioners conducting Africa-focused work to share their scholarship with broader audiences. As a diamond open-access publication, People Centred ensures that knowledge remains freely accessible to researchers, students, policymakers, and practitioners across Africa, supporting the journal’s commitment to scholarly equity and development impact.
Editor-in-Chief
Jacob Rugare Mugumbate, Institute of Development Administration, Harare, Zimbabwe & University of Wollongong, Australia Email: jmugumba@uow.edu.au
Editorial Advisory Board
Adiko Adiko Francis – Centre Ivoirien de Recherches Économiques et Sociales (CIRES), Université Félix Houphouët Boigny Cocody, Côte d’Ivoire
Kefasi Nyikahadzoyi – University of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Mandla Mfundo Masuku – University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Akashraj Devanga – Bule Hora University, Ethiopia Fidelis Lucas Kisusi – Open University of Tanzania, Tanzania
Moffat C. Tarusikirwa – Zimbabwe Open University, Zimbabwe William Abur – University of Melbourne, Australia
Chamunogwa Nyoni – Bindura University of Science Education, Zimbabwe
Jotham Dhemba – University of Eswatini, Eswatini
Edmos Mtetwa – University of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe
Bishnu Mohan Dash – University of Delhi, India
Leonorah T. Nyaruwata – Zimbabwe Open University, Zimbabwe
Janestic Twikirize – Makerere University, Uganda Promise
Jude Emordi Promise– Development Practitioner, Nigeria
Role of Advisory Board Members Advisory Board members ensure that articles published in People Centred maintain high standards and international quality. Board members regularly assess articles submitted for publication, provide suggestions to improve journal quality and expand readership, serve as institutional links transmitting ideas and suggestions from readers, and market the journal to potential authors.
Please see the submission guidelines here.
People Centred: The Journal of Development Administration
Institute of Development Administration, Harare, Zimbabwe
Email: jmugumba@uow.edu.au
Publisher: Pluto Journals, evek@plutojournals.com
People Centred: The Journal of Development Administration is published biannually. The journal’s backlog is archived on AJOL and hosted on the Africa Social Work and Development Network platform.
As of joining the African Journals Initiative, the journal is published as Diamond Open Access. The Open Access statement, license terms, copyright terms, and a statement on its absolute lack of author charges can be found here. People Centred maintains a fully charge-free policy to all manuscript submissions and processing.
Authors will receive a Copyright Form for electronic signature upon the acceptance of the article for publication to agree to the Pluto Journals Publishing Agreement https://www.plutojournals.com/publishing-agreement/. Moral rights will be retained by the original Author(s) and copyright will be held by the authors. Contributors are responsible for obtaining written permission to make use, in both print and electronic media, of material for which they do not hold the copyright and for ensuring that the appropriate acknowledgements are included in their manuscripts.
The journal is published Open Access on ScienceOpen and the Open Access statement, Open Access license terms, copyright terms as well as a statement on its absolute lack of author charges can be found here. Reuse rights of published material are governed by the CC BY-NC 4.0 license as stated here https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
People Centred welcomes high-quality submissions that align with the journal’s aims and scope. All manuscripts undergo initial editorial screening followed by double-blind peer review for those deemed suitable. Authors are expected to adhere to the highest ethical, scholarly, and professional standards throughout the submission and publication process.
People Centred: The Journal of Development Administration upholds the highest standards of ethical integrity and scholarly responsibility in all published work. This journal follows Pluto Journals’ Ethics and Code of Conduct policy, which aligns with the ethical standards endorsed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). In particular:
We expect all authors to state in their article if they have a conflict of interest which could potentially bias their opinions—for example, funding or employment relationships.
All named authors on articles should confirm that they have jointly participated in the research and writing of the article, and that no author has been omitted from the list of authors.
We require authors to warrant that their articles are original, have not been previously published, and do not plagiarise or otherwise copy someone else’s work without attribution.
We also require authors to warrant that their article does not defame, libel, or bring another person into disrepute, and neither does it contain anything illegal (e.g., copyright infringing).
Research involving human participants must comply with appropriate ethical standards and approvals. Authors should include information about ethical review and informed consent procedures where applicable. The journal is committed to maintaining rigorous standards of peer review, ensuring that all published work represents a significant contribution to development administration scholarship.
Editors and reviewers must disclose any potential conflicts of interest that could influence, or be perceived to influence, their handling of a manuscript. Conflicts may include personal relationships, academic competition, or financial interests related to the work under consideration. If a conflict exists, editors and reviewers must decline to participate in the review or editorial decision-making process. The journal maintains procedures to ensure that editorial decisions are made without bias and based solely on scholarly merit. Editors are not involved in decisions about papers in which they have a conflict of interest and such submissions are handled by another qualified editor.
All submissions are checked for originality during the editorial review. The reviewer’s role includes the process of checking and dealing with text similarity and suspected plagiarism. Plagiarism includes the unattributed use of another author’s words, ideas, data, or images, as well as excessive text recycling from one’s own prior work. Reviewers are responsible for reporting potential misconduct concerns to the Editor, who handles concerns according to the COPE plagiarism flowchart
https://members.publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/plagiarism-submitted-manuscript-cope-flowchart.pdf. Manuscripts found to contain significant plagiarism are rejected, and if plagiarism is discovered after publication, the journal may issue a correction or retraction and notify the authors’ institution as appropriate. The editor is responsible for guiding the process and for publishing corrections, retractions, or expressions of concern when appropriate. All authors will be informed and their consent (where possible) obtained before any changes are made. Appropriate measures will be taken, including possible retractions of articles, when cases of scholarly misconduct are detected.
Retraction of articles may be required when there is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable due to misconduct (e.g., data fabrication, plagiarism) or honest error; when the work has been previously published elsewhere without proper attribution; or when the research or publication process was unethical. Retraction notices are published promptly, clearly identified as such and linked to the original article, which remains in the public record but marked as retracted. The notice will include the reasons for retraction and who is retracting the article.
Corrections (errata or corrigenda) are published by the journal to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the scholarly record. If an error is identified that affects the publication’s reliability, but not its overall conclusions, a correction will be issued. Corrections will clearly describe the change, reference the original article, and be freely accessible. Minor errors that do not affect the interpretation of the work will not typically warrant formal correction.
Appeals: should an author wish to appeal a decision of Reject, they should write to the Editorial Executive. Two members of the Editorial Board not involved in the original review process for the article will reconsider the article and reviews and submit their recommendations. Only one round of appeal will be permitted per manuscript.
