Abstract
In Ethiopia, attempts made by youths and local government to diversify rural youths livelihood strategies are rare at operational level. Even few project launched for youths so far with the help of nongovernmental and governmental organizations are mostly failed. The failures of these projects are mainly attributed towards the start up of the business which held an assumption of nationwide livelihood opportunities and constraints disregarding local level peculiarities. As a result youths in rural areas become victim of unemployment which forced them to take other desperate options of rural-urban and international illegal migration. Hence, this study was meant investigate local level livelihood diversification strategy opportunities and the determinants of youth livelihood strategy choice in four selected districts of East Gojjam Zone of Amhara regional state, Ethiopia. Employing cross sectional mixed research approaches, data were gathered through survey and Key informant methods from a total of 388 sample and key informant interviewee recruited from eleven Kebeles of the four districts. Data were analyzed using multinomial logistic regression, ranking methods and other descriptive statics. Findings revealed that youths in the study area are engaged in few finger counted income generating activities, among countless opportunities of on-farm off- farm and non- farm economic sectors available for rural youths. Youth are engaged not only in those livelihood strategies usually regarded as common, the strategies that they currently choose are extremely laborious and unproductive. The study further revealed that, the determinant factors behind youths participation in few laborious and less productive sectors are low educational status ,lack of access to institutional credit, lack of market linkage , poor information access, and rural urban linkage, low total annual income, high dependency ratio in the family, long distance to the market center, poor road network and inaccessibility of transport facilities, and societal allocation of livelihoods on gender based criteria were found the significant determinant factor for youth livelihood strategy choice. Hence serious attention should be given for participatory approaches in identifying local level opportunities and in reducing youths' constraints for participating in diversified livelihood strategies. Keywords: rural youth, livelihood strategy, livelihood diversification determinants, Gojjam, Ethiopia DOI : 10.7176/JPID/51-03 Publication date: November 30 th 2019
Highlights
A livelihood comprises the capabilities, assets and activities required to make a living
Materials and methods Study area The study was conducted in four districts of East Gojjam Zone, which is one of eleven administrative Zone of Amhara regional states in the Republic of Ethiopia
The independent variables were chosen based on the theoretical assumption and a total of sixteen independent variables were entered into the model and eleven statistically significant variables were identified in order to measure their relative importance on, rural youth livelihood strategy choice among On-farm + non-farm, On-farm + off-farm and On-farm + off-farm + non-farm with reference to on farm only livelihood strategies. This indicates that the discussion of the results focused on the impacts of the explanatory variables on youths choice among On-farm + non-farm, On-farm + off-farm and on-farm + off-farm + non-farm livelihood strategies compared to on-farm only livelihood strategy. i) Dependency ratio Dependency ratio was found significantly and negatively related to on-farm plus non-farm, on-farm plus off-farm, and on-farm plus non-farm plus off-farm livelihood diversification strategies at less than 5%, 10% and 5 % level of significance when compared with on-farm only strategy
Summary
A livelihood comprises the capabilities, assets (including both material and social resources) and activities required to make a living. A livelihood is sustainable when it can cope with and recover from stress and shocks and maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets both and in the future, while not undermining the natural resource base (Ellis 2000, DIFDI 2008).In order to have sustainable livelihood and reduce risk and shocks individuals may follow diversified a livelihood strategy. Livelihood diversification is strategy of having diverse portfolio of activities that contributes to the sustainability of livelihoods of individuals or families (Elias 1998 cited in Khatun and Roy 2012, Porter 2012). The strategy improves family’s livelihood long-run resilience in the face of risks or sudden shocks. In this respect, it works for individual and family livelihoods in same manner that it has on larger social and economic groupings. Social and economic groups from small scale to large scale are advised to increase their livelihood diversity in order to promote greater flexibility and allow more possibilities for substitution between opportunities that are in decline and those that are expanding (IRP, ND, Proctor, 2014)
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