ABSTRACT
The African continent represents a vast area of the globe. It is three times the size of the US and its population of 800 million people is nearly equal to that of the Americas. There are 54 nations with over 1000 different languages and cultures. Yet despite its rich diversity, Africa is often treated as a monolith in which the tendency is to over-generalize Africa’s development (Chazan et al, 1999; Tordoff, 2002). Although it is true that certain common factors do exist, such as the universality of colonialism and the preponderance of underdevelopment, this obscures important regional distinctions. As noted by Chris Allen (1995, p302), ‘there are many Africas’, and in this light Southern Africa is one of the areas of the African continent that warrants systematic treatment as a region – not merely as a geopolitical division but more importantly as a socioeconomic construction (MacLean, 1999).
