Livelihood Diversification in Amibera Pastoral Communities of Afar Region: Determinants and Challenges
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Date
2013-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The Afar survives for centuries through practicing their traditional production system and
way of life that is friendly to the Socio-economic and ecology of the area they inhabit.
However, during the imperial period the Afar pastoralist have faced a challenge after
their communal grazing lands are incorporated by large commercial and state farms. This
process leads them to impoverishment, resource scarcity, vulnerability to drought and
land degradation. This and other reasons forced the pastoralists in the study area to
engage in djfferent non-pastoral economic activities to realize their desired livelihood
outcomes. The purpose of this study was therefore, to understand traditional and
alternative livelihood strategies undertaken by the pastoral households, the determinant
factors that influence livelihood diversification, and the constraints that pastoralists faced
in djversifying their livelihood. Multi-stage stratified random sampling procedure was
followed to select three peasant associations (one from pastoral and two from agropastoral
PA), and each peasant associations were stratified in to three wealth stratum.
Then 100 households were proportionally selected among each stratum. Both qualitative
and quantitative methods were used to collect essential data. Questionnaire were used to
collect quantitative data, whereas, FGD& key informant interviews were undertaken to
collect qualitative data. Secondary data were also used in the study. Both descriptive and
econometric model were used to analyze the data. The descriptive statistics used includes
X2 -test & independent t-test, one-way ANOV A, frequency, percentage, mean, and
standard deviation; and the econometric model used was logistic regression. The result
shows that the better-off wealth group was less diversified as compared to other wealth
groups. Only 41.2% of them were diversified and 48.8% of them was still depends only
on livestock production. While, 90.6% of the poor households were diversified and
mostly involved in wage labor in the nearby large commercial farms. The logit model
result shows that, Age of household head, livestock size, distance from the nearest town
and dependency ratio have a significant and negative influence of livelihood
diversification, whereas, family size, farm size, average education of the household and
sex of the household head have a significant and positive influence on diversification.
However, livestock size does not have statistically significant influence on livelihood
diversification. Moreover, the pastoralists in the study area constrained by different
factors in pursuing alternative livelihood such as, lack of initial capital, lack of
agricultural input, the expansion of P.julifora in most farm and grazing lands, etc.
Considering diversification of livelihood as an important means to ensure food security,
the government should increase its effort on human capital development. Agricultural
input and credit service should also provided by the concerned bodies.
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Keywords
Pastoralist, non-pastoral economic activities, livelihood diversification