Socio-Economic Contributions of Community Based Participatory Watershed Development on Rural Farm Households at Gammo Gofa Zone of Demba Gofa Woreda, Ethiopia

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to assess the socio-economic contribution of community based participatory watershed development among 164 sampled rural farm households of Demba Gofa Woreda. To achieve this objective, the study was applied multi-stage representative sampling technique. Mixed research design was adopted. The Quantitative data collected were entered to STATA software version 11 and analyzed using tools of descriptive statistics: Chi-square test was used to check the relation between key socio-economic variables. Both primary and secondary data sources were used. Additionally, 13 key informants were interviewed and about 21 purposively selected participants were included in three focus group discussions. The cumulative findings revealed that the intervention on majority of farm households brought significant progress and improvements on production, nutritional status and rehabilitating degraded lands in the last five consecutive years on one hand and due to institutional failures and communal limitations the intervention brought slight changes and progress on the income in terms of increment and diversification and education in terms of school enrolment and effectiveness in few farm households of the sampled kebeles. Finally it is recommended that improving the training, visitation and extension service, Ensure participation through willingly rather than employing forceful coercion, developing and expanding small-scale irrigation broadly and improving the marketing channel are most important tools to increase and improve the socio-economic contribution of the intervention to farm households.

1.2. KEYWORDS: CBPWD, Socio-Economic Contribution, Farm households