This book was made possible thanks to the support of the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is interested in promoting rural development in developing countries. Besides taking stock of rural areas in developing countries today, the book summarises the theories and approaches to rural development. It then analyses rural development strategies in both OECD and developing countries to identify lessons for policy makers interested in building resilient and sustainable rural livelihoods. This includes a case study of Korea’s Saemaul Undong rural development programme. This historical experience is enriched by analysing the rural development strategies of diverse countries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa at lower levels of development. Based on the analyses and historical experiences of these countries, this book concludes that it is necessary to develop a new rural development paradigm for developing countries in the 21st century. The book sets out a toolkit consisting of a process for developing rural strategies. The process includes assessing each country’s specific natural, human and institutional resources, hard and soft infrastructure, incentives for different agents to work together, policies that may be relevant for the country’s conditions, and the priorities and sequencing of those policies into a coherent strategy. The process also consists of developing a financing and implementation plan with monitoring and accountability to make necessary and inevitable adjustments over time as conditions change.