In the last decade, the question of rural development has come to the fore in the debate on the economic development of Third World countries. Not only have past development strategies been subject to enlightened criticism from policy makers, international financial organizations and social scientists, but new development strategies have been adopted with hardly any contributions to their formulation from their target populations. The lexicon of development has been enriched by the emergence of such new terms as ‘integrated rural development’, ‘development from below’ and ‘basic needs approach’. But in all the twists and turns in the thread of the development debate, one thing on which there appears to be a convergence of views is the pivotal role of man in the development process. It is, therefore, surprising that the population factor has only recently been accorded the importance it deserves in the development strategies of developing countries.

There are several aspects of a country's population which have a direct bearing on its development. A United Nations (U.N., 1983) expert group on population resources, environment and development noted that ‘an analysis of the population factors must take into account many other variables in addition to the number of persons, age, sex composition and geographical location. It must encompass socioeconomic characteristics such as income distribution, level of education, health and family status.’

This chapter, however, focuses on only two of these variables: the health of the population with special reference to the incidence of onchocerciasis in the Upper East Region of Ghana and the geographical location of population in the region.