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The Role of Small Towns in Diversifying the Livelihood of Rural Communities: The Case of Samre Town Saharti Samre District, Tigray, Ethiopia

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posted on 2024-09-05, 23:15 authored by Mengistu Desta Fitsum
It is not unusual to observe the rural communities participating in alternative income generating activities including construction, petty trading, daily labor, and the like. The objective of this research, among others, is to investigate the role of Samre Town in diversifying the livelihood strategies of the nearby rural communities. It also aims to identify the livelihood sources of rural communities surrounding Samre Town, urban-rural livelihood linkage and the factors hindering actual exploitation of the role of Samre town. In doing so, data were collected from both primary and secondary sources. Sample sizes of 155 households were chosen from three tabias: Lemlem Arena, Mai-tekli, and Samre that totality comprises seven kushets. A random sampling technique was employed in selecting kushets and households as well. Both descriptive statistics and econometric modeling were used to analyze the collected data. The descriptive analysis indicated that Samre Town plays a pivotal role in the rural community through market provision of their agricultural products, serving as a source of agricultural input, being a center of education, credit service, health and other important facilities. The town and the rural people are tied together in terms of market, credit access, education, health, road, and other administrative issues. Despite these facts, however, the rural communities cannot obtain the maximum possible benefit from Samre Town due to inaccessible of road, and lack of market, land scarcity, and administration related challenges. The results revealed that compared to other households, farmers living around Samre town are more likely to participate in important livelihood diversifying strategies assuring the hypothesis that emerging urban towns play significant roles in diversifying rural livelihood strategies. The empirical outputs also revealed that the participation likelihood in livelihood diversification reduces as household heads got older and older, living far away from the town. However, the findings revealed that households with larger family size are highly probable to diversify their income earning strategies. Another important finding of this study is that, households with access to the road are likely to reduce the chance to participation in non-farm tasks by about 0.9% as compared to those having no access to roads. Hence, the local and regional governments should have to give a great amount of attention, for meeting the basic needs of the rural communities; such as basic social infrastructure development and strengthen the Small towns ‘urban-rural linkages for more productivity. This could be by making collaborations with other Nongovernmental organizations’. The rural community also requires trainings and awareness about the benefits of non-faming diversification that ever. Keywords: Diversification, Livelihood, Rural livelihood, Samre Town, Small Towns

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Mekelle University

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Fitsum Mengistu Desta (2013) The Role of Small Towns in Diversifying the Livelihood of Rural Communities: The Case of Samre Town Saharti Samre District, Tigray, Ethiopia, Thesis. Mekelle:MU.

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Mekelle University

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en

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    Mekelle University, Ethiopia

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