Does the non-farm sector offer new hope for rural Africa? In the face of economic crisis and restructuring across Africa, small-scale enterprise has come to play a central role in rural livelihood and accumulation strategies. This apparent dynamism has attracted favourable attention from development thinkers and policy-makers, who have identified non-farm enterprise as a new low-cost agent of rural development. The research in this book challenges the growing consensus on the developmental potential of the non-farm sector. On the basis of recent fieldwork, the author argues that the prospects...