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An Atlas of Ethiopia Livelihoods
On July 1, 2011, at the Ghion Hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the formal launch of the Atlas of Ethiopian Livelihoods took place. The Atlas draws on data assembled by the USAID funded Livelihoods Integration Unit (LIU) that has up until now been absent; data that makes it possible to piece together a comprehensive and holistic picture of how rural households in Ethiopia make their living, and how they get by from year to year. This Atlas is the culmination of an intensive multi-year effort that aimed to structure the local knowledge of tens of thousands of Ethiopians, and resulted in a unique set of detailed information about household economic operations.
The original intent of this campaign was to provide a basis for improved national early warning, the premise being that it is possible to better predict the variable localized impacts of drought, market shocks, and other transient hazards on households’ economic well-being if we first understand the extent to which households in different areas of the country depend upon their own production, local and regional markets, and informal sources of income.
Presentations at the July 1st launch highlighted the scope and implications of the livelihoods information shown in the Atlas, for both disaster management and longer-term development concerns. The subject matter covered the full story of livelihoods seen from the point of view of household operations in very different environments – highland/lowland, agricultural/pastoral, dry/humid, high productivity/low productivity, wealthier/poorer.
Among topics dealt with were: food crop, cash crop and livestock production; seasonality and hunger; how much of people’s food comes from their fields and livestock, how much from the market; how and where people earn cash – from crop and livestock sales to paid labour to selling firewood; and what households spend on both food and the other necessities of life.
More than 1000 hard copies of the Atlas have been made available to livelihoods practitioners, Ethiopian government officials, and early warning network partners.
