Pastoralism is a culture, livelihoods system, extensive use of rangelands. It is the key production system practiced in the arid and semi-arid dryland areas. Recent estimates indicate that about 120 million pastoralists and agro-pastoralists life worldwide, of which 41.7% reside only in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Pastoralists live in areas often described as marginal, remote, conflict prone, food insecure and associated with high levels of vulnerability. Pastoral communities of Ethiopia occupy 61% of the total land mass and 97% of Ethiopian pastoralists found in low land areas of Afar, Somali, Oromiya, and SNNPR. In spite pastoral areas have significance role in national economy, yet very little consideration was given to pastoral development and policy makers often neglect them, focusing on the interests of agriculture and urban people. The constitution of Ethiopia gives pastoral communities the right to free land grazing, fair use of natural resources, have market access and receive fair price, and not displaced from their own lands. However, pastoralists have faced new problems in recent years, including competition for water and pasture; unrepresented in socio-economic and political activities, ethnic based conflicts, poverty, and uneven drought and climate changes. The government of Ethiopia began large scale efforts to develop the pastoral areas and initiated different projects, but pastoral development policies and strategies seem to be state centrally-driven. In Ethiopia the current nature of pastoralism and pastoral communities’ life style is changing. Therefore, government needs to develop policies and strategies which are based on local customs and practical knowledge.

This paper aspire in evaluating the impact of Ethiopia's productive safety net program on households' livelihood in Babile district by using primary data that were collected during January and February in 2017 from PSNP treatment and controls group sampled households. Descriptive statistics and Propensity Score Matching were used to evaluate the impact of the program in the study area. The paper revealed that among eleven model variables five of them influence the program participation decisions. Thus, the program had positive and highly significant effect on consumption in which 1269.11 Kcal was found due to the program intervention. Even though the result of the study shows that there is no significant difference among treatment and control groups in terms of annual income household participation in PSNP has positive and statistically significant effect on food consumption, so that on households' livelihood.

In Ethiopia, livelihood diversification has become a major source of income for rural communities. This study was carried out in rural kebeles in the Kebri Dahar district, and it focuses on livelihood diversification strategies and the factors that affect livelihood diversification. The collected types of data were from primary and secondary sources based on a qualitative and quantitative basis. Multistage sampling techniques were employed in selecting the representative households of 119 respondents. Furthermore, multinomial logistic regressions were used to analyze and achieve the objective. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 was used to analyze the collected data. The results revealed that 33.6%, 3.30%, 10.1%, and 52.9% of the respondents participated in the on-farm, off-farm, nonfarm, and combinations of livelihood activities, respectively. The descriptive statistics showed that 52.9% of the respondents diversified their livelihoods and 47.1% did not. The multinomial logistic regression shows that being male-headed as well as the increased age of HH head were found to be significant at a 1% significance level in three livelihood activities which positively and negatively influenced livelihood diversification. Livelihood diversification has a positive impact on security in the study area. Thus, it should be promoted not only by the government and nongovernmental organizations but also by individuals who are interested in livelihood diversification since it implies food security.