Here we describe an economic development programme termed ARISE – an acronym for African Rural Initiatives for Sustainable Environments. The programme has the potential to contribute to the simultaneous achievement of three goals to which South Africa is committed, namely:
• job creation,
• broad-based black economic empowerment, and
• achieving expressed conservation and environmental objectives.
The programme is currently being developed in the form of two ongoing pilot projects that, taken together, employ 576 previously jobless people, have created several small enterprises, and are beneficially affecting thousands of hectares of severely degraded land in South Africa’s rural areas (EOI,2 2006). The programme may be categorised in the context of South Africa’s economy as eitherb “economic development” through poverty alleviation and in future perhaps part of the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP), and clearly has the potential to enable people in South Africa’s rural areas to make the transition from the “second” (informal) to the “first” (formal) economy. ARISE therefore offers an ideal opportunity for a large-scale rollout across South and southern Africa.