Literature Review On Rural Development

2.0 Literature Review
2.1 Defining development, rural development, its aims and sustainability
Conceptual Clarifications
Development
Development in its current conception include; Democracy, human rights, free market economy, gender equality, population and environmental control, crises, etc (World Bank; 1985). Development is about the issue of self-reliance. It is a self-generating and self-sustaining phenomenon. It is about human beings and for them to achieve development; they must have the skills or capacities to generate their own knowledge for development. Development must be self-propelling (Ibid). Therefore, development conceived in human term is the maximum satisfaction of basic human needs of adequate and descent food, water, electricity, shelter, education, modern social and infrastructural facilities (Development Administration; 1998).
Rural Development
The concept of rural development has changed significantly during the past few decades.
Until the 1970s, rural development was synonymous with agricultural development, and focused on increasing agricultural production (Fernando, 2008). This focus has been driven primarily by the interests of industrialization to extract surpluses from the agricultural sector to reinforce industrialization (Francks et al., 1999, as cited in Fernando, 2008). In the early 1980s the concept changed and now encompasses “concerns that go well beyond improvements in growth, income, and output”. These concerns include an