Poul Ove Pedersen - Small African Towns

SMALL AFRICAN TOWNS - BETWEEN RURAL NETWORKS AND URBAN HIERARCHIES

Series Editors: Abebe Zegeye and John Higginson

POUL OVE PEDERSEN

Centre for Development Research Copenhagen

First published 1997 by Ashgate Publishing

Reissued 2018 by Routledge

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Copyright Poul Ove Pedersen 1997

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A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 97070636

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-34302-3 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-429-43944-5 (ebk)

Since 1987 a group of researchers at the Centre for Development Research in Copenhagen has been studying small enterprises in development. In this research we have seen the small enterprise as performing specific tasks within the larger societal system of production and distribution, and as being shaped and adapted to the specific social and economic environment of which it is a part. This environment is locally specific, but comprises both local and nonlocal actors, small and large enterprises, public, private and cooperative organizations, households and social relations. Thus although we have studied the small enterprise, the focus has been not so much on the small enterprise itself as on the interaction between it and the environment in which it operates.

We have focused most of our research mostly on small enterprises in a specific type of environment, namely the small rural town serving a rural hinterland. Empirically, our research has been based on fieldwork in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. The research has resulted in four Ph.D. dissertations, and a fifth is in preparation. Jesper Rasmussen (1992) has studied the building sector in Zimbabwean district service centres from a regional development perspective. Anders re (1992) has looked at the building sector in small Tanzanian towns from the perspective of rural industrialization. Jrgen Billetoft (1995) has studied small enterprises in Kenya and Bangladesh with a focus on small-enterprise support policies and the interaction between small enterprises and the public sector, donors and NGOs. On the basis of field work in Kenya, Steen Seierup (1995) has investigated the role of social structure on entrepreneurship and small-enterprise development; and Pernille Srensen is presently studying the structure of small-scale grain-marketing in a small Ugandan town, and the restructuring taking place as a result of structural adjustment policies.

This book focuses more specifically on the small town itself and its role in the rural production and distribution system. It is primarily based on fieldwork carried out in Gutu and Gokwe, two district service centres in Zimbabwes communal areas, during a number of visits in the period 1989 to 1995, but it also draws more broadly on the work in the research group. In particular, I have drawn heavily on Jesper Rasmussens work, which has also been based partly on fieldwork in two Zimbabwean district service centres, namely Gutu and Murewa. on the building sector in the district service centres are based to a large extent on his work.

I have drawn less directly on my other colleagues, but their empirical experiences and our theoretical discussions have in many ways influenced the work presented in this book. I therefore thank them all for their collaboration, and especially Jesper Rasmussen for permission to use his work.

During our fieldwork in Zimbabwe, Jesper Rasmussen and I were both based at the Department of Rural and Urban Planning at the University of Zimbabwe. I would like to thank our colleagues there for the kind reception and inspiration we have always received during our stays in Zimbabwe.

I would especially like to thank Philemon Jazi, who was research assistant to both Jesper Rasmussen and myself throughout our fieldwork in the district service centres, first as a student, and later as a colleague and Ph.D. student with a research project of his own on Zimbabwes district service centres. His knowledge of people in the towns we researched, his never-failing energy in embarking on yet another interview, and his interest and understanding of our research project has been invaluable to the results.

Since 1992, Wilbert Gooneratne has invited me to a number of seminars organized by UNCRD in preparing and carrying out a project on small-town development in eastern and southern Africa. This has given me a valuable opportunity to meet a group of administrators and researchers from many African countries engaged in small-town development. on the actual development of small African towns is to a large extent based on the work carried out by and the experience of that group. I would like to thank my colleagues in the group, both for their interest in my work and for the experiences they have shared with me, and especially Wilbert Gooneratne for inviting me to participate.

Theoretically, I have drawn much inspiration from the meetings of the EADI (European Association of Development Institutes) working group on industrialization strategies, and I would like to thank my colleagues there. Under the auspices of Meine Pieter van Dijk, this working group has organized a number of research seminars in recent years attempting to adjust and modify the theories of networking and flexible specialization to the realities of developing countries. Though the small rural towns I studied and their trading enterprises bear little physical resemblance to the production networks of Marshallian districts in northern Italy, which are usually associated with flexible specialization, the theory describes a diversified industrial structure and strategies of enterprises which on an abstract level differ little from what I found in Africas small towns.