Livelihood Diversification among Pastoralists and Its Effect on Poverty: The Case of Amibara District, Zone Three of Afar National Regional State

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.