Abstract:
Household income and livelihood of the rural people depend on agricultural production.
However, periodic drought caused by climate variability, adverse socio-economic conditions and
demographic factors are the main constraints of the sector. Small scale irrigation is one of the
key rural development strategy assumed to improve agricultural production, income growth and
livelihood improvement. The purpose of the study was to assess the contributions of small-scale
irrigation on household’s income growth and livelihood improvement in south Achefer Woreda.
Both cross sectional and descriptive research were employed and adopted quantitative and
qualitative research approach. Primary and secondary data were collected and used in the
study. Data were collected from 194 household heads and 5 interview respondents(2 irrigation
expert officers and 3 members of irrigation user associations in each kebele),80 were irrigation
users and 114 non-users. Three rural kebeles household heads were stratified into two strata and
proportional sampling technique were employed to select the sample respondents. Secondary
data was collected by reviewing different documents. Descriptive statistics, inferential statistics
and binary logistic regression model were used to analyze quantitative data. Factors that affect
households’ income growth and livelihood improvement were analyzed using the binary logistic
regression model. The descriptive statistics indicated that, irrigation users had found to be
better and improved livelihood status, while the non-users had found to be poor livelihood status.
The human, physical and natural capitals have more significant and positive associations with
livelihood status, while financial and social capitals have no significant associations. Food
security, educational security and health care security are significant indicators of livelihood
outcomes. The major findings of the study indicated sex of household heads, educational level,
access to extension services, market access and cultivated land size were positively and
significantly affected the livelihood status of household heads, while startup capital and age
dependency ratio of household heads have negatively and significantly affected the livelihood
status of household heads. The result of the study concluded that small-scale irrigation is one of
the strategies ensuring to improve household’s livelihood status in the study area. Therefore, it is
recommended that governmental and non-governmental organization should expand access to
small scale irrigation for farm households to improve their livelihood.
