Abstract
Addressing urban areas in the introduction to a work focusing on rural issues may seem paradoxical But rural Africa is no longer the one we think we know Its rapid transformations reflect the effects of the vigorous population and urban gro1Nth in the continent as well as the characteristics of its integration into the world economic system. Yet dominant visions explain why we still conceive of a possible future for Africa in terms of past urban and rural categories, when these no longer correspond to the day-to-day realities oft he people of the continent