ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the nature of marginality in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in general and Zimbabwe in particular and to explore challenges to development that reside primarily in forces of polarization that are corollary to the centre/periphery structure of development. It introduces an approach to define polarity and marginality for countries with dual economies and explore ways of applying them to cases of SSA in general and Zimbabwe in particular. In Ethiopia, counterposed binaries are least polarized as the country manifests relatively weak functional integration with foreign markets. Most cases of SSA marginality fall into the second typology because of the dominant role of hegemonic and inequitable systems that characterize the centre-periphery mode of growth. In countries such as Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa, where there were permanent settlements of Europeans, commodification first involved the division of land resources between the natives and the settlers, the latter appropriating the best agricultural lands and those with mineral potentials.
