ABSTRACT
We explore here the scope for developing rural industry in Africa and more generally for expanding productive non-farm employment outside the agriculture sector. This is related to the serious concern which exists regarding the feasibility of needed labour absorption in the rural areas, given countries exhibiting some of the highest population growth rates in the world and given the generally acknowledged failure of attempts made across the continent at import-substituting industrialisation. Our discussion ties in with research which is ongoing into ‘sustainable rural livelihoods’, where the focus is on rural households diversifying their sources of income and employment, particularly through non-farm activity; and with the closely related phenomenon which has been observed of ‘de-agrarianisation’, a process whereby people in Africa are said to be moving out of agriculture into other occupations within the rural areas or actually out of the rural areas altogether. This process has been seen as a significant secular trend that needs research (Bryceson, 1996; Bryceson and Jamal, 1997).
Because population densities in Africa are mostly quite low, there has never been the same concern regarding high population growth rates there as in Asia, although these rates are extremely high. Annual population growth rates projected for 1994-2000 are 2.8 per cent for sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), compared with 1.7 per cent for developing countries as a whole, and in a number of countries are near to 4 per cent. While at current population growth rates population can be expected to double in developing countries as a whole in perhaps 36 years, in SSA the period is only 19 years (Human Development Report (HDR) tables). The need to absorb this huge additional population at acceptable, if not increasing, levels of income per head is evident.
