Rural Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development:A Way Out to Increasing Landlessness and Sole Dependence on Farming in the Rural Economy

Abstract

The theme of this research is on rural entrepreneurship and enterprise development as a way out to the increasing sole dependence of rural community in farming in the face of many problems basically land scarcity/landlessness , highly rain fed agriculture where the community should wait for god to bring the rain. If the rain comes on time it is ok, if not, one can imagine all kind of repercussion for a household which entirely depends on farming for a livening. In addition it would be naïve to think in Ethiopia farming will sufficiently feed and transform this growing population Therefore, it is crucial to think of other economic sectors mainly rural entrepreneurship and enterprise development. This research focused on factors that affect rural entrepreneurship and enterprise development of rural communities in regard with the Asset-access-activities-outcome framework of rural entrepreneurship and enterprise development model.  A survey was undertaken at household level   with sample elements (households) which were taken through cluster probability/random sampling method. The data that were obtained from the sample households was analyzed quantitatively through binary nominal logistic regression model since the target variable is defined as a categorical variable which is a dichotomy. The odds ratio method was used to predict the presence or absence of a characteristic or outcome (adoption of rural enterprise development by a household in this case) based on values of a set of predictor variables.

Keywords: rural entrepreneurship, enterprise development