Area/regional planning for rural development strategies with special reference to the eastern ord of Upper Volta

The problem of development in Africa seems to convey a common set of themes of development form and process which applies to almost any country in the continent. Following the initial experience of development after decolonization and the resultant problems of unequal distribution of the benefits of development, a number of conceptual paradigms emerged to explain the structural barriers to sustained and equitable development. Two approaches are given which have been extremely influential in presenting a descriptive model of the mechanism of underdevelopment, and a number of development models have been based on one or both approaches. The center-periphery and dual structural concepts seem to be quite ingrained in the process of identifying important variables for the development of systems of planning, spatial as well as sectoral. Area, regional or space planning for rural development depends on the role it is intended to play under the macrosystem of national or regional planning the country is using. In Upper Volta the government has introduced a regionalization concept for rural development of the country under the framework of "Organism Regionaux de Developpement" (ORD) and has divided the country into 11 ORD"s. Although the existing framework of the ORD"s leaves out a considerable number of functions that would ordinarily come under a system of regional development the present list of functions does contain important aspects that would have to be carefully analyzed in a framework of area planning and micro-spatial organization.