This study attempted to investigate the beef cattle production system and opportunities for market orientation in southern Ethiopia, Borena Zone. The specific objectives of the study were to characterize cattle production systems, assessment of marketing systems, assess seasonality of domestic…

This study analyses the institutional and organizational arrangements of irrigation water management and identifies the determinants of collective action and its effectiveness in managing communal irrigation schemes in the districts of Atsbi Wemberta (Tigray region) and Ada’a (Oromiya region),…

Traditionally, the land tenure system in Southern Ethiopia may be characterised by patrilineal inheritance and virilocal residence. Young girls have very little influence over when and whom to marry. Further, they have to go to a husband that their clan or family has identified for them, meaning…

"During the past decade and a half, Ethiopia’s approach to promoting development and improving the lives of the country’s rural population has been driven by a government strategy called Agricultural Development–Led Industrialization (ADLI). This strategy’s main goal is to encourage fast,…

Numerous studies indicate that agricultural production is sensitive to climate variability, and lack of infrastructure in developing countries increases vulnerability to extreme climate events. In Ethiopia, the historical climate record indicates frequent droughts and floods, which can devastate…

Migration, AIDS epidemics, and urban food security, interact in complex ways that are little researched and understood in the Southern and Eastern African context. To date, research on urban food security has been concerned with urban systems of acquisition and production, with an emphasis on…

In Ethiopian development policies, pastoralist areas have recently attracted more attention. However, much debate and policy advice is still based on assumptions that see a sedentary lifestyle as the desirable development outcome for pastoralist communities. This paper investigates current…

Ethiopia experiences a fierce political debate about the appropriate land tenure policy. After the fall of the socialist derg regime in 1991, land property rights have remained vested in the state and only usufruct rights have been alienated to farmers – to the disappointment of international…

Movement of people, or migration in the positive sense of the term, contributes positively to the achievement of secure livelihoods, and to the expansion of the scope for poor people to figure out pathways out of poverty. Migration does this by ameliorating seasonality and risk, reducing…

Human activities such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation have significantly increased the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases (GHG) leading to global climate change. Global climate change and its associated weather extremes pose considerable challenges worldwide, and mitigating…

The major economic activity for pastoralists is animal husbandry. The harsh environment in which herders raise their livestock requires constant mobility to regulate resource utilisation via a common property regime. In contrast to the mobile way of life characterizing pastoralism, agriculture…

Over the coming decades, global change will have an impact on food and water security in significant and highly uncertain ways, and there are strong indications that developing countries will bear the brunt of the adverse consequences, particularly from climate change. This is largely because…