Abstract Rural development has a long history in international development practice, yet the conception of ‘rurality’ and its implications for what rural development does are rarely discussed in their own right. Based on a double-paired comparison of two North African (Morocco, Tunisia) and two Southern African (Botswana, Zambia) cases, this article investigates varying, context-specific meanings of ‘rural’ and their interaction with internationalised development policies. We show that while the focus on agriculture and social protection in international development cooperation represents a strong structuring force in the policy field, the targets of rural development – ‘rural areas’ or ‘rural populations’ – take on various meanings in national politics and people’s daily lives. These observations challenge the common expectation of comparability on which global development paradigms hinge. They further call for reconsidering the value of ‘rural’ areas in their own right, building on the meanings and visions that people attribute to them beyond their insertion into global capitalism.
Thyen et al. (2026) studied this question.