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Summary Children’s load-carrying has been largely invisible in studies of African economies, being commonly subsumed under women’s or family labor. This paper, based on interdisciplinary qualitative and quantitative research in 24 sites, examines the role of child porterage in helping to fill Africa’s transport gap and considers its developmental significance for education, well-being, and health. It provides detailed information regarding the scale, nature, and perceived impacts of children’s load-carrying work in domestic and commercial contexts, indicates the importance of gender and generational analysis, and explores key policy challenges.

Accessibility and mobility are embedded in the development nexus in far-reaching ways. Field studies of mobility among women and men in rural settlements with poor road access illustrate the frustrations and costs of living off-road. They are frequently marginalized and invisible, even to local administrations. State decentralization appears to have had little positive impact in reducing “tarmac bias” and improving rural service delivery. A range of potential interventions, from Intermediate Means of Transport to electronic communications is reviewed, and opportunities for building social capital in off-road areas through nurturing improvements in state–civil society relations are considered.

The sufferings of so many small farmers in Africa who produce on contract have been well recorded and analyzed, yet it seems that such production will continue to expand. Can governments and nongovernment organizations (NGOs) take any action to reduce the suffering? We examine our own experience of contract farming in Nigeria and South Africa in the context of earlier research, and draw attention to important issues which have received little attention in the literature, notably staffing of schemes, farmers' previous experience with multinational national companies (MNCs), water control and labor issues. We make recommendations toward codes of practice which could be issued to companies, regulators and small farmers.