The issue of Rural Industrialisation (RI) or more generally the growth of Rural Non-Farm Employment (NFE), is regarded as a critical component of rural transformation in less developed economies, given the failure of the industrialisation-led development strategies of the fifties. It emphasises the need to re-examine the role of agriculture and small-scale enterprises (SSEs) in long-term economic development. The rural sector should be regarded as having considerable flexibility to generate employment and incomes rather than as one passively' supplying labour to an urban based industrial sector.