Assessment of Rural Entrepreneurs Integration Strategies in Value Chain Activities: With Emphasis to Rural Micro and Small Enterprises Found in Arsi Zone

Abstract

Entrepreneurship development via value chain is an effective, and often the only route to building prosperous, dynamic, and sustainable economies across rural communities in developing countries, where majority are living in rural area. MSEs are one strategy through which entrepreneurship fostered in Ethiopia. But MSEs are not integrated into the value chain activities accordingly, and most of the time they cease their operation within short period of time because of lack of integration in the value chain activities. Hence, the overall objective of this study is to assess the extent to which rural entrepreneurs (MSEs) participated in the value chain activities and to identify integration strategies for rural entrepreneurs in the value chain activities in selected district of Arsi Zone. MSEs engaged in rural agricultural activities of three districts of Arsi Zone; namely Tiyo, Hetosa, and Digalu and Tijo were taken as target population for this study and considered as strata and proportionate stratified sampling was used to select respondents from the three districts. In order to determine the sample respondents from each stratum simple random sampling was used and the data was analyzed descriptively. The finding of the study revealed almost there is no as such clear integration of rural entrepreneurs in the value chain activities of their produces. Access to credit, access to technology, enterprise resource capability, market information, and enterprise profitability are the five top factors that influence rural entrepreneurs’ participation in to the value chain activities. The research propose the value chain approach development specifically Value chain Upgrading and Financing for rural entrepreneurs found in Arsi Zone so as to ensure integration of them in the value chain activities.

Keywords: Value Chain, Integration, Rural entrepreneurs, MSEs