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Rurality as a choice: Towards ruralising rural areas in sub-Saharan African countries

Rural development practices in sub-Saharan Africa are still based on modernisation approaches. This has led to distortion in rural identity in most sub-Saharan communities. This article embeds this issue in the development discourse. It calls for developing rural areas rurally – rather than urbanely. The paper argues that improvements in rural conditions should aim to make rural lives and the environment sustainable, while preserving rural identities. Drawing from literature, it presents a conceptual framework for understanding rurality and shows how planning can serve as a tool for achieving rurality focused development. It provides six suggestions that could lead to integrating rurality-as-a-choice in development policies and practices. The suggested measures include the heritagisation of rural areas, introduction of rurality-focused vision in planning, and organisation of campaigns for the protection of rural heritages, among others. It contributes to emerging literatures on identifying problem-generating issues in rural development in sub-Saharan Africa.