LEARNING FROM THE PEOPLE - PARTICIPATORY RURAL APPRAISAL, GEOGRAPHY AND RURAL-DEVELOPMENT IN THE NEW SOUTH-AFRICA

Top-down rural development strategies in Africa have generally not suc ceeded in raising living standards among the rural poor, It is argued that inappropriate development strategies have stemmed from methodolog ies that fail to appreciate the whole picture in rural communities, an d in particular ignore local people's perceptions, needs and understan ding, Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) represents a significant ste p forward in the design of methodologies and a selection of these tech niques is evaluated, Many PRA methods have much in common with the fie ld research methods that have been used by geographers over many Sears to interpret people-environment relationships, A research investigati on in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, suggests that geographers c ould have an important role to play in this area of applied research a nd, in particular, in the context of post-apartheid South Africa there is an urgent challenge to be met in promoting rural development in po or, former black Homeland areas. Copyright (C) 1997 Elsevier Science L td.