Drawing on the results of non-formal education programmes inspired by Brazil's famous educationalist, Freire, particularly non-formal education and literacy programmes in Brazil, Ghana and Tanzania, the author illustrates and advocates the potential of non-formal education as a key component of bottom-up, human-centred development in Africa. He thus allies the process of non-formal education to developing countries' efforts to come to terms with current trends in globalisation, which have precipitated unemployment and urbanisation with devastating consequences for rural development and educational progress. Through close examinations of the trajectory of globalisation and its impact on poor countries, unemployment, the linkages between non-formal education and development, and the role of the media in non-formal education, the book argues that non-formal education and functional literacy programmes offer the best prospects of meaningful development in poor countries, some substantive critiques of non-formal education notwithstanding.