| dc.description.abstract | OVER the past ten years, African governments have wrestled with the
problems of designing and implementing comprehensive rural development
policies. In an overwhelmingly rural continent with, for most areas,
only a recent history of urbanisation, such an emphasis is understandable.
But if African cities are for the most part young, and small by
world standards, they are also growing faster than cities in any other
major world region. This rapid growth, superimposed on a meagre
resource base, will put increasing pressure on planners to devise solutions
for the adequate and equitable distribution of urban services. The
solutions that emerge, however, will be heavily conditioned by two sets
of factors: the immediate demands of urban growth, and the wider
political/administrative and social context within which policy-making
takes place.
In an effort to explain more clearly how these factors operate in
contemporary Africa, this article will compare the formulation and
implementation of key urban policies in Kenya and Tanzania from
independence until the end of 1973. Because of their importance for
lower-income groups, three policy areas -land allocation, housing, and
planning - are singled out for more intensive examination in this
analysis | en_US |
