Africa Development, Volume XLVII, No. 2, 2022, pp. 1-14 © Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, 2022 (ISSN: 0850 3907) On Resuscitating the Aborted National Project: A Retrospective and Prospective View (Notes from my Last Conversation with Thandika Mkandawire) Text of the Inaugural Tandika Mkandawire Annual Memorial Lecture presented at the 3 rd edition of the Social Policy in Africa Conference convened virtually from 22–24 November 2021. Fantu Cheru* Opening Statement First of all, let me thank my long-time friend, Professor Jimi Adesina, for inviting me to give this inaugural address. It is a tall order to try to give a talk on the intellectual contributions of Tandika Mkandawire to the social sciences. He covered so many timely and important topics in the feld of development; his work was too cumulative and exhaustive for me to be able to summarise and discuss them in the time allotted to me. I also want to thank Professor Jimi Adesina for carrying the ‘transformative social policy’ torch – a topic so close to the heart of our late colleague, Professor Thandika Mkandawire. This is a topic that Thandika theorised deeply and he subsequently built one of the most successful research programmes during his tenure as Director of UNRISD. He dedicated his time to grounding theoretically the transformative role of social policy. This particular theoretical journey into social policy came after his ground- breaking work on the harmful effects of structural adjustment programmes. While others, such as Sir Richard and his colleagues at UNICEF, had started to take a critical look into SAPs and introduced the idea of ‘Adjustment with a Human Face’, Thandika took theorising on the transformative role of social policy to the next level once he arrived at UNRISD in 2009. * Emeritus Professor of International Political Economy, American University, Washington, DC. Email: cherufantu@gmail.com