The main theme of this symposium is "Agricultural Restructuring in Southern Africa". Seeking for a topic which has priority and which is - in the view of the author - an integral part of this theme, this paper addresses the role of non-governmental organizations in the socio-economic development process with people's participation as the key. This institutional approach is closely interrelated with land use and efficiency small farmer support programs the design of development projects institutions and public choice theory a self-reliance approach at individual as well as regional/national/international level. All these points are linked with the crucial and challenging problem: How to overcome the absolute poverty in the developing world by using the existing potentialities of human and natural resources - supported by people's mutual help which is organized in their private voluntary institutions and fostered by a macroeconomic political frame with positive external effects for an active "development from the bottom". Due to the fact that absolute poverty is mainly concentrated in rural areas, which also leads to sharp migration and the problem of over-agglomeration of cities, the paper deals above all with this regional problem and with the challenging approach to contribute to an adequate solution through so-called "integrated rural development". The paper presents a frame in which empirical investigations of Southern Africa can be integrated.