Adversities Livelihood and Copping Strategies of Slum Area Residents in Gondar City: North West Ethiopia

Alemayehu Mulat Liyew

doi:10.7176/cer/12-9-02

Abstract

Slum development has been negative result of urbanization in developing country like Ethiopia. One of the metropolitan cities in Ethiopia, Gondar faced this problem. Hence, this study aimed at investigating the physical environment, means of livelihood, health situation and social network of residents in Gojjo sefer slum area in Gondar city. Qualitative research design, phenomenological approach was employed to understand the real life experience of slum dweller in the study area. 35 participants were sampled purposively among 83 total habitants. Accordingly, data was collected by in-depth interview, key informant interview and field observation. The findings show that, congested and poorly constructed housing, inadequate infrastructure and social service provision characterize the area. Most of the dwellers are immigrants from rural area engaged in petty economic activities as a means of livelihood. The dwellers have being suffered from varieties of problems such as low income, lack of health care services and are exposed to frequent disease such as diarrhea, fever and chronic illnesses. Keywords: slum, livelihood, adversities, dwellers DOI: 10.7176/CER/12-9-02 Publication date: September 30 th 2020

Highlights

Rapid urbanization comes with myriads of problems such as of squatter settlement and slum development in developing countries (World bank, 1993).The current existence and continued formation as well as expansion of slums at unprecedented rate are one of the challenges encountering cities in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries
The place which is mostly attributed as slum is sometimes named as (Gojjo Sefere or plastic housing) and has 83 households with average number of 4 family members
The study area was at Gondar City, Arada sub city /Kifle ketema slum area called Gojjo sefer

Summary

Introduction

Rapid urbanization comes with myriads of problems such as of squatter settlement and slum development in developing countries (World bank, 1993).The current existence and continued formation as well as expansion of slums at unprecedented rate are one of the challenges encountering cities in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Dwellers have low earning; they mostly do not have any formal education facilities, work in environment which is harmful to them. This fact forces them to work in informal sector (Alamgir, Jabbar et al 2009). The report of UN-HABITAT 2003 ,in Africa, shows that there are cities which have large number of people living in slum area, for Africa Addis Ababa ( the capital of Ethiopia), case, Kinshasa and Nairobi are the major ones. In Ethiopia slum area are expanding in many cities especially in the capital and big regional cites

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