Livelihood Diversification Strategies and Livelihood Outcome of Rural Household in Ethiopia: A Reviewed Paper

Abstract

This review was carried out on appraisal of rural household in livelihood diversification strategies and livelihood outcome in Ethiopia. The target is specifically to review the impact of income diversification on livelihood outcome situation, to review determinant participation of rural household in off/non-farm diversification, and to review the determinants level of income generated from the activities in Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, Agriculture is the main livelihood of most population in the countries and it contributes 79% of foreign earnings, employs some 79% of the population and 34.1% to the GDP and is the major sources of raw material and capital for investment and market. Despite it's the main contribution for the event of country's economy, the prevailing capacity of agriculture to achieve food and livelihood security is tremendously declining from time to time due to diverse challenges and risks. As a result, majority of the population is multidimensional poor, affected by some combination of food insecurity, insufficient access to adequate education and health services and inadequate employment opportunities. With this reason Ethiopia faces high levels of food insecurity and ranking joined of the hungriest countries within world even if the Global Hunger Index (GHI) score has declined from 55.9 in 2000 to 29.1 in 2018. As reading from different literature, income diversification is coined for these situations to handle all the interrelated problems associated to economy of rural household. As a result, a numbers of rural household participate in off/non-farm activities additionally to on-farm have gradually customized as coping mechanism and to boost their livelihood. Therefore, policy makers should give due emphasis to the aforementioned variables within the empirical review that determine participation of rural household in income diversification activities so as to improve the livelihood of smallholder farmers.