ILO pub-WEP pub. Report emanating from the WEP on promotion of employment opportunities in rural areas of Kenya - examines social and economic data (incl. Income distribution, labour force, land tenure, etc.), covers technology, rural development strategy, macro-economic policies, etc., and includes an evaluation and conclusions. Bibliography pp. 136 and 137, references and statistical tables.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Sub-Saharan Africa's rural population is growing rapidly, and more young people are entering the labour market every year. This raises serious policy questions. Can rural economies absorb enough job seekers? Could better-educated youth transform Africa's rural economies by adopting new technologies and starting businesses? Are policymakers responding to the youth employment challenge? Or will there be widespread unemployment, social instability, and an exodus to cities and abroad? Youth and Jobs in Rural Africa: Beyond Stylized Facts uses survey data to build a nuanced understanding of the constraints and opportunities facing rural youth in Africa. Addressing the questions of Africa's rural youth is currently hampered by major gaps in our knowledge and stylized facts from cross-country trends or studies that do not focus on the core issues. Youth and Jobs in Rural Africa takes a different approach, drawing on household and firm surveys from selected African countries with an explicit focus on rural youth. It argues that a balance between alarm and optimism is warranted, and that Africa's "youth bulge" is not an unprecedented challenge. Jobs in rural areas are limited, but agriculture is transforming and youth are participating, adopting new technologies and running businesses. Governments have adopted youth employment as a priority, but policies often do not address the specific needs of rural populations. Youth and Jobs in Rural Africa emphasizes that by going beyond stylized facts and drawing on more granular analysis, we can design effective policies to turn Africa's youth problem into an opportunity for rural transformation.
This report adopts a decent work perspective to approach the challenge of promoting employment and reducing poverty in rural areas by examining issues of employment, social protection, rights and social dialogue in rural areas in an integrated way.
First published in 1985, Technology and Rural Women synthesizes the fragmented empirical evidence and the wide range of theoretical approaches on the effects of modernisation on women in the developing world. Using a multi-disciplinary methodology, empirical and sectoral overviews, and country case studies, it draws together the literature to clarify the issues and the policies. The book begins with a conceptual overview and analyses the applicability of traditional theories of technological change and impact on gender based distributional questions. It proceeds to compare the African and Asian experience, examines the African situation regionally, and then as a set of four country case studies. The authors find that the imperfections of rural factor markets have contributed to women’s concentration in labour intensive sectors, marked by low productivity and low returns. Biases in the agrarian structure and the extension services are largely responsible for the Institutionalisation of discrimination against women. Finally, the volume identifies the social, economic, and technical constraints to the diffusion of technologies relevant to rural women’s tasks. In the final chapter the book’s analysis is further refined and extended, so that its conclusions to both theory and policy making are clearly brought out, and areas of future research identified. This book is an essential read for students and scholars of labour economics, women’s studies and economics in general.
Despite almost four decades and billions of dollars in development activities, we are barely in a position to track the changing dynamics of poverty or to define with conviction the processes that entrap the poor in their misery. Accounting for about 90% of global poverty, rural poverty, through transmigration, is also a main contributor to urban poverty. It is in the rural areas of the world where poverty is most severe in human terms, where the hunger, hopelessness, hardship, and despair commonly associated with entrenched poverty are most pronounced, where basic health services, sanitation, educational opportunities, and other common amenities are most lacking. The alleviation of rural poverty is therefore tantamount to the alleviation of global poverty in its entirety. The State of World Rural Poverty offers the first comprehensive look at the economic conditions and prospects of the world's rural poor.
