Since the second world war, many developing nations have been experiencing rapid economic growth. However, the benefits of such growth have been unjustifiably distributed to a few localities, with large sectors of the population remaining peripheral to these benefits. The necessary structural change for a more balanced distribution of benefits is still in its infant stage.

Among a number of factors which contribute to the unbalanced distribution of economic benefits in developing nations, such as their colonial past and the need to earn foreign exchange and to get quick returns, two may be singled out. First, there is a large subsistence sector in the population, with a low productivity level, low income and little access to innovation and modernization. Facing limited resources, developing nations tend to locate development projects in a few urban and commercial crop-producing areas (e.g. cotton in the Gezira area of Sudan, tea in Kenya), thereby introducing a dualist structure into the economy.

Secondly, due to previously unbalanced growth, the subsistence population sector lags behind, in development, the rapidly-growing urban and commercial crop-producing areas. Due to lack of opportunities and facilities, people in the subsistence sector tend to migrate to these growth centres to improve their living conditions; but although the centres have grown fast during recent decades they do not offer sufficient opportunities for the migrants, and consequently there are high unemployment rates in urban areas.