The Impact of In-Migrant Pastoralists on Livelihood Outcomes of the Natives in Rufiji District, Tanzania

Abstract

The concept of livelihood is about individuals, households or groups making a living or attempting to meet their various consumption and economic necessities. Livelihood in many rural areas of the world is complex, dynamic and poses a lot of human life outcomes. Perhaps it is only the day-to-day uncertainty of survival that remains to be constant. In this paper we examine the natives’ livelihood challenges as caused by in-migrant pastoralists in Rufiji District, Tanzania. Data were collected using a questionnaire which was administered to 200 respondents in five villages. Data analysis involved generation of descriptive statistics for quantitative data and use of content analysis for qualitative data. Multiple linear regression was used to determine the impact of in-migrant pastoralists’ characteristics and natives’ livelihood outcomes. The findings showed that 69.5% of the respondents reported that there were livelihood challenges which had resulted from the arrival of pastoralists in the study area. Further, from the model, out of the eight factors analysed, four of them were found to have statistically significant impact (p< 0.05) in affecting natives’ livelihood outcomes. The four factors were: newly introduced economic activities (p < 0.05), presence of investors (p < 0.05), new agricultural systems and techniques introduced after the arrival of pastoralists (p < 0.001) and change in land uses (p < 0.05). Among these, only land use change had negative influence on the livelihood of the native communities while the remaining three showed positive influence. The study concludes that the livelihood outcomes of the natives have been affected by the coming of the pastoralists. The study recommends that there is a need for relevant stakeholders, working as inter-sector teams, to strengthen the identified positive livelihood effects and take all negative effects as challenges for improvement.