Evaluation of rural livelihood options for households in Zango local government area, Katsina state, Nigeria

Abstract

Rural livelihood suffers serious neglect which makes availability of different options of economic activities to be chosen as a means of survival very insignificant which affect the livelihood of many households. This study examines the types of livelihood activities and factors affecting the choice of livelihood options among the households in the study area. It used quantitative method. A total of 400 respondents were sampled out using disproportional quota sampling for the interview and the data was analysed using simple descriptive statistics. Multinomial logistic regression was used to determine the effects of demographic and social variables on the preferences of livelihood activities among the households. The result indicates that many livelihood options exist but farming related activities that constitute 57% livelihood activities among the respondents and the lowest livelihood activity people practiced are non-income related activities (fetching firewood and water, housekeeping and childcare) accounting for 7.5%. The findings shows that age, gender and designation of the households significantly determine the choice of government-based livelihood activity since the P-value is less than 0.05 (i.e., age (0.002), gender (0.03), designation (0.001)), while agricultural livelihood activity choice was significantly influence by gender and ethnicity with a P-values (0.000) which less than 0.05 as the odd reduce by a factor (0.667) and (0.131) with a unit increase respectively. This implies that not all demographic and social variables determine the choice of livelihood activities. However, the major challenges respondents’ experiences in the choice of livelihood options include lack of support from government and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO), lack of skills acquisitions centers, over reliance on irregular and low paying laborious daily wages as well as the farming activity is at subsistent level, they received low amount of annual rainfall, difficulties in getting fertilizer and improved seeds and among others. The study recommends that the government should provide skills acquisition centers, fertilizer, improved seeds, financial support, and technical support (agricultural extension workers) and other farm equipment’s to the households. The household should encourage by traditional rules and elides to get bank loans to improve their livelihood activities.