Gender, social capital and empowerment in northern Ethiopia

This paper investigates the interactions between gender, social capital and empowerment in the rural areas of northern Ethiopia. We define empowerment narrowly as the power of households to make important decisions that change their course of life. Depending on the degree of control over decisions, the response of households is classified into passive, active and full control. A multinomial logit model is used to analyze empowerment levels of the rural households, first for the full sample of households and then for male headed and female headed households separately. Findings indicate that social capital, measured by the number of local associations a household is a member of, is an important factor in empowerment, but with significant gender differences. Social capital is significant for male headed households but not for female headed households; for the latter, education and access to credit are the strongest determinants of empowerment.Empowerment, Gender, Social capital, Ethiopia

Roadside Planting in Ethiopia: Turning a Problem into an Opportunity

 Roads have both positive and negative impacts in the areas surrounding them. With the expansion of roads growing at an inexorable speed in Ethiopia and all Sub-Saharan Africa, these impacts need to be well understood. A questionnaire was used to gather information on road-related impacts on the rural population. A total of 529 sample households were selected in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia. The three most common consequences cited by respondents in order of importance were dust, flooding and erosion. Close to 44% of the respondents said that the occurrence of dust has increased after construction of the road. The reduction of yield estimated by farmers ranges from 10% to 50%. Close to 11% of the sample households faced decline in crop production and income due to dust lifted up from roads. The breakpoint for road dust occurred approximately at 200 to 280 meters from the road. Roadside plantations along rural roads have proven to mitigate road-related impacts and restore the ecological balance. When linked to rural development programs, roadside planting can create employment while generating a reliable source of income for rural communities

Targeting international food aid programmes : the case of productive safety net programme in Tigray, Ethiopia

Ethiopia has experienced more than five major droughts in the past three decades, leading to high dependency on international food aids. Nevertheless, studies indicate that asset depletion has not been prevented; neither did food insecurity diminish. Since 2004/5, the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) has been implemented to improve food security in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia. Critics point out that the implementation of food aid programmes can have negative impacts as well as positive outcomes for local communities. Accordingly, this survey study aimed to analyse the distribution and allocation of food aids in the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in Tigray. Results of 479 interviews revealed that targeting different households in the PSNP has been considerably linked to socio-demographic attributes among which age and size of family were decisive factors to receive food aids. Furthermore, older households with smaller family size received more direct support. Inequality between genders was another major finding of this study. When combined with the marital status, there was also a big difference in the percentage of married or unmarried women receiving food aids. These findings could provide fundamental information for policy intervention to correct food security programmes at household level and reduce hunger. Given that, socio-demographic factors can help to identify particular and usually different requirements, vulnerabilities and coping strategies of the members of the food aid programme, so that they can be much more addressed when an emergency happens

Gender, social capital and empowerment in northern Ethiopia

This paper investigates the interactions between gender, social capital and empowerment in the rural areas of northern Ethiopia. We define empowerment narrowly as the power of households to make important decisions that change their course of life. Depending on the degree of control over decisions, the response of households is classified into passive, active and full control. A multinomial logit model is used to analyze empowerment levels of the rural households, first for the full sample of households and then for male headed and female headed households separately. Findings indicate that social capital, measured by the number of local associations a household is a member of, is an important factor in empowerment, but with significant gender differences. Social capital is significant for male headed households but not for female headed households; for the latter, education and access to credit are the strongest determinants of empowerment

Rural livestock asset portfolio in northern Ethiopia: a microeconomic analysis of choice and accumulation

Livestock fulfill different functions. Depending on their livelihood strategies, households differ in their choice of what type of animal to keep and on accumulation of the chosen animal overtime. Using a panel data of 385 rural households in a mixed farming system in northern Ethiopia, this paper investigates the dynamic behavior of rural households' livestock holding to identify determinants of choice and accumulation of livestock overtime. Choice is analyzed for a principal animal, the animal that constituted the largest value of livestock assets a household possessed, using a multinomial logit model. Results indicate that rural households differ in their choice of what type of animal to keep. Agro-climatic conditions, sex and age of household head, presence of an adult male member in a household, and liquidity are the major factors that influence the type of principal animal households keep. Conditional on the principal animal selected, we analyzed the factors that determine the accumulation of the chosen animals by correcting for selection bias. Area of land cultivated is the most significant factor that explains the number of animals households keep. Other factors include sex of household head, diversification into nonfarm self-employment, and shocks

Poverty, asset accumulation, household livelihood and interaction with local institutions in northern Ethiopia

Acknowledgements i Definition of local terms vii Acronyms vii List of figures viii List of tables viii Summary xiii Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Background 1 1.2 Research questions 4 1.3 Study area 5 1.3.1 Tigray regional state 5 1.3.2 The study villages 9 1.4 Data and methodology 10 1.5 Thesis organization 13 Chapter 2 Poverty profile and inequality in northern Ethiopia, 2004-2006 15 2.1 Introduction 15 2.2 Methodology and data source 16 2.2.1 The poverty line 17 2.2.2 Poverty indices 18 2.2.3 Data 19 2.3 Extent of poverty in northern Ethiopia, 2004-2006 19 2.3.1 Geographical distribution of poverty 22 2.3.2 Results of stochastic dominance test 23 2.3.3 Characteristics of the poor 26 2.4 Modelling determinants of poverty 30 2.4.1 Variables for regression 32 2.4.2 Results 34 2.5 Poverty simulation 40 2.6 Determinants of income inequality 45 2.7 Conclusions 49 Chapter 3 Rural poverty dynamics and impact of intervention programs upon chronic and transient poverty in northern Ethiopia 58 3.1 Introduction 58 3.2 Intervention programs in Tigray 59 3.3 Data and methodology 62 3.3.1 Data 62 3.3.2 Measuring and decomposing poverty 62 3.3.3 The impact of intervention programs upon chronic and transient poverty 64 3.3.4 Conditioning variables for program participation 67 3.4 Results and discussion 69 3.4.1 Dynamics of poverty 69 3.4.2 The poverty impact of the FFW and FSP programs 78 3.5 Conclusions and policy recommendations 85 3.5.1 Conclusions 85 3.5.2 Policy recommendations 86 Chapter 4 Rural livestock asset portfolio in northern Ethiopia: A micro economic analysis of choice and accumulation 89 4.1 Introduction 89 4.2 Choice and accumulation of livestock: Conceptual framework 90 4.3 Livestock asset portfolio in rural Tigray 93 4.3.1 Average livestock portfolio 93 4.3.2 Livestock inequality 97 4.4 Choice modelling and accumulation 99 4.5 Estimation results 107 4.5.1 Selection of primary animal 107 4.5.2 Livestock accumulation 113 4.6 Conclusions and policy implications 117 Chapter 5 Social capital and household welfare in northern Ethiopia 121 5.1 Introduction 121 5.2 Literature review 122 5.3 Theoretical background and estimating models 126 5.3.1 Social capital and household welfare: Multivariate analysis 126 5.3.2 Social capital and consumption smoothing 128 5.4 Data and measurement of social capital 133 5.4.1 Data 133 5.4.2 Measurement of social capital 134 5.5 Empirical results 137 5.5.1 Social capital and consumption level 137 5.5.2 Gender dimension of social capital 141 5.5.3 Social capital and consumption smoothing 142 5.5.4 Consumption and specific shocks 144 5.6 Effects of social capital: Access to credit, diversification, collective action and empowerment 147 5.6.1 Social capital and access to credit 147 5.6.2 Social capital and diversification 151 5.6.3 Social capital and collective action 159 5.6.4 Social capital and empowerment 162 5.7 Conclusions and policy implications 167 5.7.1 Conclusions 167 5.7.2 Policy implications 169 Chapter 6 Conclusions and recommendations 171 6.1 Conclusions 171 6.2 Recommendations 172 6.3 Limitations and suggestions for future research 174 6.3.1 Limitations 174 6.3.2 Suggestions for future research 175 References 177status: publishe

Effects of regional trade agreements on trade in strategic

Recent proliferation of regional trade agreements (RTAs) has intensified the debate on merits of south-south trade agreements. This study contributes to this debate by analyzing trade creation and trade diversion effects of African RTAs on trade in nine of the eleven strategic agricultural products. An extended gravity model is estimated using PPML. Results indicate that African RTAs have mixed effect on trade creation and trade diversion. Net trade creation is positive in four of the eight RTA and it is negative in three. Further, for a significant number of the individual agrifood commodities, regional agreements in Africa have increased openness to non-members’ trade while increasing trade among themselves. Although a lot remains to be done, RTAs in Africa are attractive means to speed up the move towards common market for agricultural products in the continent. This will have positive implication for food security and sustainable agricultural development in the continent

Rural livestock asset portfolio in northern Ethiopia: A microeconomic analysis of choice and accumulation

Livestock of different species fulfill different functions. Depending on their livelihood strategies, households differ in their choice of type of animal to keep and accumulation of the chosen animal overtime. This paper investigates the dynamic behavior of rural households’ livestock holding to identify determinants of choice of type of animal households’ keep and accumulation of the chosen animals using a panel data of 385 rural households in a mixed farming system in northern Ethiopia. Dynamic behavior of choice is analyzed for a principal animal, an animal that constitutes the largest value of livestock assets a household possesses, using a multinomial logit model. A household that keeps oxen as a principal animal is considered the reference household. Results indicate that households differ in choice of type of animal they keep. Agro climatic conditions, sex and age of household head, the presence or absence of male household members and liquidity are the significant factors that determine type of principal animal households keep. Conditional on the principal animal selected, we have analyzed the factors that determine the accumulation of the chosen animals by correcting for selection bias. Size of land cultivated is the most significant factor that explains the size of animals households keep. Other factors include sex of household head, diversification into non-farm self employment and shocks