Rural-Urban Alliances and Reciprocity in Africa

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed a surge of scholarly interest in the rural sectors of emerging nations. For the social scientist, this means a new awareness of agrarian people, comprising some 70 to 90 percent of most Third World populations. For the country folk, this may produce merely a higher incidence of well-meaning snoopers asking new-fangled questions, or it may prove profitable in the long run. Whatever, a new dimension has been added to the quest for an adequate understanding of the processes of national development and integration.