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

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