Making a Living

Book excerpt: Livelihoods in rural Africa are changing in response to disappearing job prospects, falling agricultural output and collapsing infrastructure. This book explains why the responses to these challenges are so different in different parts of Africa. Making a Living uses case studies from commercial farming regions in Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe and from much poorer areas within eastern and southern Africa.to give a broad comparative study of rural livelihoods. These case studies reveal how household relations, poverty and gender all play a part in the changing political economy of rural Africa.