The marginalized and poorest in different communities and settings of Ethiopia

Abstract

This chapter describes how the extent of poverty and the causes and nature of marginality vary from place to place, depending on the natural resource, livelihood strategy, climatic, agro-ecological, and socio-cultural conditions. Local attributes of marginality were assessed in four different districts of rural Ethiopia. Extreme land degradation was a key force in one district, lack of credit in another, competitive commercial pressure in another district, and resource management practices according to cultural values in the remaining district. There was always a complex interplay of various factors that exclude some people from the benefits of economic growth that others enjoy. Independently from the different features of marginality, this interplay was found to be a root cause of poverty in all of the districts studied.