Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses different ways in which people in rural Africa try to make a living. It focuses on eastern and southern Africa, using case studies to understand the livelihoods of people who depend on various combinations of small-scale farming, livestock-keeping, trading and migrant labour. The book outlines successive attempts by the bantustan state of Bophuthatswana to create a class of African commercial farmers in the later years of the apartheid era. It explains how the smallholder farming sector in Kenya expanded so dramatically that it became a model for rural development elsewhere in Africa. The book explores the effects of sharp falls in the demand for migrant labour and on the diversified livelihoods people construct in response. It describes the links between gender and livelihoods in different kinds of rural economy and in different kinds of household.