Demographic & Socio-economic Determinants of Squatter Settlements in Jijiga Town, Somali Region
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Date
2010-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Currenlly Jijiga town exhibits faster growth rate (5% per annum) as compared with other
urban centers of Ethiopia. As a result, the town has been growing horizontally in an
unplanned situation. This condition seems to contribute its share for the rapid proliferation of
squatter settlements at the periphery of the town.
This study focuses on the squatter settlements in Jijiga town, Somali region, The main
objective of the study is to assess the demographic and socioeconomic determinant factors
that contribute in favor of squatter settlement. Besides this, the study tried to address the
forms of land acquisition, housing condition and availability of social services and amenities.
Hence, to achieve the study objective open and closed ended questionnaires for 90 squatter
household heads were carried out in the sampled kebele OJ and kebele 06.
The major finding of this study is that squatting in study area is of recent phenomena that
came into existence since J983E. C. Major demographic and socio economic factors identified
by researcher in aggravating squatting activity are family size, marital status, headship
status, education, occupation, income, poverty, administrative bottlenecks, rising house rents,
over crowding, etc. Furthermore, direct occupation, the practice of illegal land purchase and
other administrative factors contributed to the emergence and growth of squatter settlements
in the study area. Moreover, majority of the squatter settlers were internal migrants coming
in search of employment opportunities. Besides this, squatters in study area were both poverty
and non poverty driven, occupied large plots of area, have poor quality housing condition,
poor social and infrastructural services. Thus, due to poor land management together with
rapid growth of urban population and high urban land demand for house construction,
problems of squatting is getting serious in study area.
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Demographic & Socio-economic Determinants of Squatter