This book draws on the perspectives of geography and anthropology to provide a thorough examination of the role played by settlement patterns and processes in rural development in Africa. In particular, the contributors evaluate the way people arrange themselves in rural space.

They find that although in many parts of the world, villages and homesteads have been a relatively stable element in the rural landscape, in Africa settlements have provided an unusually flexible mechanism for adjusting to changing circumstances.

The discussions also focus on the manipulation of settlements by African governments as part of their development programs. According to the contributors, despite the official goals associated with such programs, their actual purpose has often been to expand government control of the countryside - while invariably producing deleterious and unanticipated side effects.