ABSTRACT
The topic of our discussion has two principal terms which in their daily use suffer from generality and ambiguity: ‘Africa’ and ‘rural development’. In order to understand their implications for research, training and policy design, they need specification. Africa is a vast region comprising 45 independent countries with enormous variations in geographical features, economic structure, social composition as well as in their land-tenure systems that are inherited and shaped by long colonial rule. Thus to talk about African countries as a single entity and African countries as an absolute group of governments is misleading and conceals important differences. Likewise the phrase ‘rural development’ and its adjectives ‘sustainable’ and
‘integrated’ have different senses in their varied uses, leading to different conclusions and different concepts for training and policy design. They have been overused and even abused by some writers and politicians amidst the rhetoric that surrounds their usages. These differences may explain the difficulties experienced by all of you, in your sincere efforts towards assisting governments as well as in the design of research and in training rural development professionals in monitoring progress made in poverty alleviation. Thus we are talking about a real problem, not an ivory tower theoretical issue. They are real because I have noted them in my visits to national rural development centres in Benin and Nigeria and in my discussions with senior officials at the Ministries of Rural Development in Zaire and Malawi and in the Department of National Planning at Abuja, Nigeria.
