African Perspectives On Reshaping Rural Development

Development studies in developing regions such as Southern Africa rely heavily on materials developed by Europeans with a European context. European dominance in development studies emanates from the fact that the discipline was first developed by Europeans. Some argue that this has led to distortions in theory and practice of development in Southern Africa. This book wishes to begin Africa’s expedition to develop proper material to de-Westernize while Africanizing the context of the scholarship of rural development. African Perspectives on Reshaping Rural Development is an essential reference source that repositions the context of rural development studies from the Western-centric knowledge system into an African context in order to solve African-centered problems. Featuring research on topics such as food security, poverty reduction, and community engagement, this book is ideally designed for planners, researchers, practitioners, policymakers, government officials, academicians, and students seeking clarity on theory and practice of development in Africa.

Contemporary discussions of Africa’s recent growth have largely interpreted such growth in terms of structural transformation, based mainly on national- and sectoral-level data. However, the micro-level processes driving this transformation are still unclear and remain the subject of debate. This collection provides a micro economic foundation for understanding the particular growth processes at work within the region’s rural areas, and in so doing provides important insights for policy action. The book provides valuable household- and farm-level evidence about the drivers of rural labour productivity, improvements in access to markets, investment in food value chains, and indeed the role of rural economic growth in Africa’s ongoing rural transformation processes. Some of the features of Africa’s ongoing rural transformation are similar to those of agricultural transformation as experienced in Asia and elsewhere. However, other features of Africa’s rural transformation are unique, and pose important challenges for development policy and planning. Together, the studies compiled in this volume provide an updated, evidence-based, and policy-relevant understanding of where African countries are in their developmental trajectories and the region’s prospects for achieving inclusive forms of development over the next several decades. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Development Studies.

This book highlights the important role of the complex nature of interactions between rural and urban areas in Africa and how this relates to sustainable development on the continent – one with a fast urbanization rate. The volume critiques the widely held assumption of a societal divide where rural areas are mostly agricultural, whilst urban areas engage in industry and services. Contributors provide conceptual arguments and present case studies in Africa which illustrate the complex and multifaceted interdependencies between cities and rural areas, through the flow of natural resources, people, capital, information, goods and services which directly impacts the socio-ecological as well as economic sustainability of these spaces. This volume forms part of an Education for Sustainable Development in Africa (ESDA) book series involving the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability and 8 partner African universities running Master’s Programs in sustainable development. The book series is intended to serve primarily as undergraduate and graduate instruction materials for courses on sustainable development in Africa, as well as policy input to key developmental issues in Africa.

This volume is the result of a group of researchers applying their insights and experience to a common theme. All the authors are con-cerned with rural development in Africa and all have focused on the con-nection between the development process and the arrangement of people and their built environment in rural space. Both anthropologists and geo-graphers have contributed to the dialogue on this subject and represen-tatives of the two disciplines are included in this volume. The members of this group have never all been in the same place at the same time, and so have utilized various electronic modes of commu-nication to link their locations around the world. Two conferences were organized, however, among a subset of the whole, in order to generate a group discussion. One of these meetings was a symposium on African rural development held at Temple University while a second was orga-nized at the African Studies Association Meetings in Toronto. Both opportunities helped raise issues that found their way into individual chapters. The audience in each case further stimulated our thinking.