ABSTRACT
The analysis of non-farm activities from an enterprise perspective has focused on an assessment of the prospects of this sector as an alternative to agriculture within the context of structural adjustment. The enterprise perspective is useful as a means of indicating constraints and opportunities within the non-farm sector, the differential effects of these on different categories of enterprises, and as a means of capturing the role of migrants from outside the village community. However, owing to the purposive design of the enterprise sample, it tells us little about the relative importance of these activities in the village as a whole, and virtually nothing about the ways in which non-farm activities interact with agriculture in the context of individual and household-level livelihood strategies. In order to capture these very vital dimensions, we must return to the initial sample of village households to investigate the role of non-farm activities in wider structures of livelihood and accumulation.
