ABSTRACT
After four decades of efforts to achieve rural development with various promotional approaches, one rapidly succeeding another, among them Community Development, the Green Revolution, integrated rural development and helping people to help themselves, with the level of action constantly changing-“self-help organizations at the level of villages, sectors and poor regions”—and accompanied by such more or less succinct strategy recommendations as modernization, expansion of research and extension services, programmes for specific target groups and organizational development, it is worth redefining the position and taking provisional stock (see Figure 1):
– What relatively sound conclusions can be drawn from the past 40 years of international efforts to achieve rural development and a lasting reduction in rural poverty?
