Rural income generating activities: whatever happened to the institutional vacuum? Evidence from Ghana, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Vietnam
2007
A. Zezza | G. Carletto | B. Davis
An increasing number of empirical papers and reports have provided evidence that point to the importance of the rural non-farm (RNF) economy in developing countries. In parallel, the livelihoods approach, recognises that households use a range of agricultural and non-agricultural activities as paths out of poverty. These strands of literature, in addition to new participatory approaches to development projects, have led to a rethinking of approaches to rural development. In particular, this literature calls into question the ‘small-farm-first’ thinking that has been the dominant perspective in rural development and poverty alleviation.<br /><br />This paper assesses the current rural development practice against the main trends in recent<br />rural development thinking, based on evidence from four country case studies: Ghana, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Vietnam.Main conclusions include: while much progress has been made in understanding the need to look beyond only agriculture for the promotion of productive activities in rural areas, and the ‘institutional vacuum’ consistently identified in the rural non-farm literature is gradually being filled, much remains to be done<br /> one aspect on which more research is particularly needed is the development of better mechanisms to promote productive investment rather than just social investment and to assess the appropriate level – community, regional, national – at which to do this.
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