Abstract
In a bold shift from the urban-centric view of development, Wang Li, Manzoor Ahmed, Qutub Khan, and Meng Hongwei have provided a blueprint for combating global rural poverty. Their book, Education and Training for Rural Transformation: Skills, Jobs, Food, and Green Future to Combat Poverty, lays out the challenges and policy implications of overcoming poverty and building a sustainable future in developing countries. They argue that only through rural transformation is it possible to achieve overarching global and national goals of fighting poverty and building a sustainable future. For rural people in developing countries, the pathways out of poverty are dependent on expanding the rural economy through agriculture, nonfarm enterprises, and rural to urban migration. The key successful economic development strategies lie in education and training that provides basic knowledge and portable skills to enhance employment opportunities for rural people. True education and training requires more than brick and mortar buildings or implementing programs; better governance is necessary to create effective institutions, provide social accountability, and participatory policy making. Overall, the goal of rural transformation emphasizes “agrarian change, integrated national development without marginalizing rural people and the rural economy” (54).
The book’s five chapters begin in chapter 1 with a discussion of the skills and jobs required for rural transformation along with an action agenda to address rural poverty based on educational equity, quality, and efficiency. The subsequent chapters provide details necessary to achieve rural transformation, concluding with a framework for policy and action.
There are five key points in the book’s discussion on the education, training, and skills essential to combating rural poverty. Going beyond basic primary literacy skills, Li et al. point to the importance of a secondary education leading to basic skills in languages, math, and science along with lifelong learning opportunities that enhance access to employment regardless of the specific occupations available. Specifically, they note the role of gender and rural poverty providing a pragmatic discussion on gender, skills, and access to employment opportunities. Failure to provide adequate training and skill development for girls and women seriously impacts their ability to obtain better paying wage employment limiting overall national economic development. The second key point is that of rural outmigration, especially of youth and those with more education and skills. As the authors state, “migration in search of work is an essential important feature of both rural transformation and accelerating urbanization” (100). The third key point with regard to rural transformation emphasizes food security and agricultural development identifying three areas of food availability, food access including household resources to obtain food for a nutritious diet, and food utilization including proper consumption as well as availability of potable water and proper sanitation. For countries such as China, the ability to successfully increase food production to meet rising demand has ameliorated concerns about food availability, but issues of food access and utilization remain. An emerging concern is that of agricultural sustainability. Building a green future as a component to rural transformation is the fourth key point. Originally the “green revolution” in agriculture focused on increased productivity; now, however, a green future requires a shift to a “second generation green revolution” for agriculture that promotes environmental sustainability. This shift provides employment in new “green jobs” that reduce the impact of agriculture, firms, and the entire economic sector to levels that are environmentally sustainable. Such development requires education and skill development empowering labor to acquire the appropriate skills necessary to fill these new jobs. Finally, the authors point to a framework for policy and action to achieve rural transformation. In particular, they point to a need to identify the supportive context that facilitates skill development as an integral part of rural transformation. Vital aspects to this framework include a supportive policy environment, prioritization of education and skill development training, good governance, the development of monitoring and accountability systems, and finally resource mobilization to address rural poverty, enhance productivity, and expand employment in the rural economy through farming activities, rural nonfarm enterprises, and via rural–urban migration.
The strength of Education and Training for Rural Transformation lies primarily in the global case studies and examples the authors provide to illustrate the key points in the book. While many of these examples focus on China and India, other countries are represented, including Australia, Bangladesh, Ghana, Mozambique, and South Sudan. The book includes a number of helpful additions, for example, a list of acronyms, a glossary, and an appendix focusing on good practices, measurement of skills, and statistical tables. Tables and text boxes along with sidebars highlight key points provide quick access to important information. For example, “Box 4.1 Policy Context in Selected Countries: Climate Change Impact and Priorities” (135–37) provides a synopsis of the state of environmental policies in eleven countries ranging from Bangladesh to Uganda.
One weakness in an otherwise outstanding discussion of rural education and skill development is the framework for policy and action. Reading the book, I had high hopes for a clear strategy addressing a plan of action to achieve global rural transformation. Instead, chapter 5 presents a confusing list of challenges with disconnected glimmers of potential directions for solutions. For example, the authors point out the problem of rapid urbanization whereby the physical boundaries of built up areas do not coincide with their administrative boundaries. The authors suggest a regional approach but fail to provide guidance on how that might be achieved suggesting that “rural-urban linkages take many different forms, depending on the political and institutional history and culture in the country as well as the geographical and ecological conditions that define the possibilities” (164). In pointing out the framework’s weaknesses and challenges the authors give numerous excuses for not moving forward, resulting in the impression that the probability of realizing rural transformation was limited at best—a disappointing conclusion. Finally, the book may have benefited from a theoretical grounding that could have provided insights into the how and why of rural conditions and possible transformations. For a theoretically grounded, albeit urban, perspective, see, for example, Less et al. (2016).
Overall, Li, Ahmed, Khan, and Hongwei address major gaps in the literature on planning and education. By focusing on the critical aspect of rural transformation in overall global and national development, the authors provide a particularly strong review of key issues and concerns along with a well-balanced set of best practice case studies and examples from around the world.
The two outstanding contributions of the book for knowledge and planning scholarship are: first, the focus on rural people and places, and second, an inclusive global perspective. These contributions alone are sufficient to highly recommend this book to planners, educators, and those involved in international development. For instructors interested in utilizing Education and Training for Rural Transformation: Skills, Jobs, Food and Green Future to Combat Poverty in the classroom, I suggest that they hold the Overview section on challenges and policy implications to follow the book chapters. While this overview provides an excellent executive summary of the document, it may be rather confusing to some students, given the density of information presented and the wide range of topics that are covered.