iarjbmIARJBMIARJBM2708-5147https://doi.org/10.47310/iarjbm.2021.v02i02.009African-Centered Contextualization: The Missing Imperative that Has Put Africa in the Position to Miss Most of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Few Achievements Made Not Be SustainedAbdulKarimBanguraGoing all the way back to 31000 BC, the Pprotodynastic/Ancient Kemetians/Egyptians were so well-informed about the import of contextualization in their daily lives that even hair and hairstyles were contextualized. Yet, today, the descendants of Africans in other parts of the continent who are the ancestors of the Kemetians are willy-nilly ready to accept all sorts of Western-oriented development designs without demanding that when targeted at them they be contextualized based on Africa’s realities and necessities-i.e. African-centered. This negligence is true of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September of 2015 and accepted by Africans. Approximately one-third of the 2030 Agenda timeframe already completed, Africa is only relatively on track to meet the following three out of the 17 goals: (1) SDG 5, gender equality; (2) SDG 13, climate action; and (3) SDG 15, life on land. Given how the SDGs were contextualized, I therefore tender the proposition that the missing African-centered conceptualization has put Africa in the position to miss most of the SDGs and the few achievements not be sustained. Thus, the following four major research questions are probed in this paper: (1) what is the essence of contextualization? (2) What is African-centered contextualization? (3) How has Africa performed on the SDGs? (4) What could have been done for Africa to perform better on the SDGs? In order to test the preceding proposition and provide answers to the questions, the research methodology employed is a mixture of descriptive and explanatory approaches. Also, both secondary data from existing studies on the topic and primary data from the United Nations and the Sustainable Development Goals Center for Africa (SDGC/A) were utilized for the analysis.