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Livelihood diversification: continuity and change in the Sahel

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Abstract

Livelihood diversification can be crucial for poor rural households in the African Sahel. Migration is a common diversification strategy during the dry season, but there are also areas with significant strategies on the farm, such as incomes from gum and resins. Sudan is a country where the income from gum arabic, the gum from the Acacia senegal tree, has played a large economic role for smallholders for generations, but there are signs of a declining production which is detrimental if people have no alternative incomes. The results showed that in parts of the country, the 1984 drought caused an event-driven change resulting in a discontinuation of production. However, in other parts of the country, the agricultural system providing gum arabic proved to be more resilient to the drought and the incomes from gum arabic still play a large role. The results illustrated a complexity of driving forces, regional differences and a large variability in incomes between households. Some causes were indirect such as prices, drought, precipitation and locust, whereas the others were direct and hence more controllable by households. This study underlined the direct causes, such as how labour input is prioritised between livelihood activities, which have not been given as much attention in previous literature. Secondly, the need for a holistic view of livelihoods is underlined in order to understand the future of gum arabic production. Empirical data were collected from extensive fieldwork.

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Notes

  1. Khartoum refers to the three parts of the city: Omdurman, Khartoum and Khartoum north.

  2. The incomes for the season of 2002/2003 were presented. The incomes varied considerably during the three seasons (2000/2001–2002/2003) for the same households, but for the purpose of this study only 1 year was illustrated. In this way the actual annual variations in incomes between households were visualised instead of calculating an average for the 3 years studied.

  3. Exchange rate: 1 US$ = 260.5 Sudanese Dinars (February, 2002).

  4. The sources of income were collected for all the members of a household, but to compare incomes regardless of household size, the income was divided by the number of members.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). We gratefully acknowledge all the assistance we received from the people of the villages included in the study in particular Sararya Makawi and Kalot, and from the staff of the El Obeid Agricultural Research Corporation, the CARE office and the Extension Unit in En Nahud. Thanks also go to Andrew Warren, Mukhtar E. Ballal, Ahmed Hanafi and Abul Gasim Seif el Din for valuable discussions and suggestions and to Margaret Greenwood-Petersson for help with the English. Finally, we also gratefully acknowledge the contribution from two anonymous reviewers.

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  1. Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies, Box 170, Lund, 22100, Sweden

    Bodil Elmqvist & Lennart Olsson

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  1. Bodil Elmqvist
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Correspondence to Bodil Elmqvist.

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Elmqvist, B., Olsson, L. Livelihood diversification: continuity and change in the Sahel. GeoJournal 67, 167–180 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-007-9043-6

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