The Impacts of Urban Expansion on Livelihoods of the Surrounding Rural Society: The Case of Tefki Town, Oromia Special Zone Surrounding Finfinne

Abstract

Urbanization is recently a rising trend seen all over the world, mostly in an upsetting rate in developing countries. Similarly, most towns in Ethiopia are recently becoming expanded towards the adjacent rural societies. The Expansions of these towns were resulted in the consuming and conversion of farm land to urban land uses and affects the agrarian livelihoods. This study is intended to assess the impacts of urban expansion on livelihoods of the society surrounding rural kebeles of Tefki town from the year 2015-2019. Specifically, the study focused on evaluating the effects of town expansion on the farmers (households) in terms of   income, the opportunities of the affected households secured from the town expansion and compensation process.  Hence, 166 expansion affected households were selected through snowball sampling, and also (5) officials from different institutions were purposively taken for key informant interview while (7) respondents from the affected farmers were selected for interview. Thus, the primary data were collected using questionnaires and interview. Secondary data have been also used to triangulate and supplement the first hand information. The collected data were analyzed by using SPSS version 20. The result showed that Tefki town rapidly expanded during the last five years as a result of population growth and industrialization. This expansion made significant effects on livelihoods of the surrounding farmers. Although they secured access to certain services, it was also brought effects like loss of agricultural land and other assets including grazing land which resulted in change of their livelihoods, and unfair compensation. This expansion has made the households of the surrounding area to lose farm land on which their livelihood used to depend on for long period of time. Every farmer has been made to lose an average of 1 hectare of their owned farm land. The grazing land of the area has been decreased because of town expansion, and thus made farmers to lack enough place of grazing for their livestock. On the other side, the compensation was not made on time for the affected farmers. The study also found out that the compensation given to the farmers was not fair, and too inadequate to sustain the livelihoods of the affected households. Therefore, a detailed potential effect assessment study should be carried out by the government and other stakeholders prior to implementing urbanization programs so as to minimize the adverse effects of urban expansion.