Abstract:
Over thousands of years, pastoralists have managed their resources and livelihoods in the
face of environmental challenges and difficult socio-economic conditions. However, since
recent decades pastoralists are challenged in maintaining their livelihoods and coping
mechanisms due to a range of ecological, demographic, economic, social, political and
climatic changes. Such changes and crises can all easily reduce large numbers of
pastoralists to destitution and sometimes cause a large-scale exodus from pastoralism. Thus,
this study was conducted to show how the Afar pastoralists are acting, reacting and
interacting with the above-mentioned factors and the effects of these activities on the poverty
status of the households. A structured questionnaire, Focus Group Discussion and Key
Informant Interview were used for data collection from 120 selected sample households in
Amibara district. The Simpson’s Index of Diversity was used to determine the livelihood
diversification level of the household and the ordered probit and binary logit models were
used to identify the determinants of livelihood diversification and poverty status of the
households, respectively. The results show that the majority of the sample households
(55.33%) were found to be diversified with average diversity index of 0.46. In terms of
diversification level, 46.67% of the respondents were non-diversified, while 37.50% and
15.83% were moderately and highly diversified, respectively. The ordered probit result shows
that age, livestock holding in tropical livestock unit and distance to the nearest market were
negatively and significantly influence livelihood diversification. Whereas, level of education,
available family labor and access to credit were positively and significantly influence
livelihood diversification. Moreover, the binary logit model shows that sex, educational level,
diversification level and total annual income were found to be significantly and negatively
influence poverty, while age and family size were positively and significantly influence
poverty status. The study concluded that households are diversifying their livelihoods and
diversification has an effect of reducing poverty in the study area. Hence, promoting
education, expanding diversification opportunities, creating market linkage and accessing
financial services are indispensable policy interventions to better livelihood.
