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Poverty and Livelihood of Coastal Communities in Tanzania Mainland and Zanzibar

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Poverty and Livelihood of Coastal Communities in Tanzania Mainland and Zanzibar Vol. 6(9), pp. 169-178, November 2014 DOI: 10.5897/JASD2014.0290 Article Number: E56F67848812 Journal of African Studies and ISSN 2141 -2189 Copyright © 2014 Development Author(s) retain the copyright of this article http://www.academicjournlas.org/JASD Full Length Research Paper Poverty and livelihood of coastal communities in Tanzania Mainland and Zanzibar Huruma Luhuvilo Sigalla University of Dar es Salaam, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, P. O. Box 35043 Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Received 14 May, 2014; Accepted 10 October, 2014 This article discusses levels and forms of poverty among coastal communities in Tanzania. The objective of study from which this article is grounded was to explore and describe the impacts of global market on the livelihood of coastal communities along the Indian Ocean. A combination of sociological and economic paradigms of poverty analysis was adopted. The poverty analysis focused on three poverty indices namely, head count, poverty gap and poverty severity index. The analysis focused on levels of household expenditures per month by region (rural or urban district) as well as by main occupation of household head. The entry point for the analysis was the household expenditure per capita. Also determined was whether level of education and sex of household head influenced income and poverty levels. The poverty analysis was further narrowed down to household level in order to address the link between the global market and livelihood at the household level. To that end, the analysis focused closely on expenditure by sex, level of education and main occupation of the head of the household. In order to make comparison between currencies, readers should use $ 1 equivalent to TZS 165,342.57 published by Bank of Tanzania on 18 September 2014. The Findings suggest that poverty levels as measured by income are caused by underlying factors of non-income poverty such as lack of assets (mainly land), low level of education, accessibility to market, and poor and weak social safety network (such as offered by cooperative unions). Key words: Poverty, livelihood, globalization, coastal communities, coastal resources. INTRODUCTION The concept of poverty and its dimensions Livelihoods are derived to varying degrees from smallholders’ farming-including livestock production and Poverty and livelihood are hardly analyzed separately in artisanal fishing...while smallholders rely primarily on one Africa. For instance, The International Fund for Agriculture type of activity; most see diversity in their livelihood base and Development (IFAD) (2011) points out that: as a way to reduce risk”. “The livelihoods of poor rural households are diverse across regions and countries and within countries. The debate on poverty has been influenced by two major E-mail: [email protected]. Tel: ++255 787 515657. Author agree that this article remain permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License 170 J. Afr. Stud. Dev. approaches. The first which uses income to measure economic or in non-economic terms, the two perspectives poverty understands poverty in purely economic terms. are linked dialectically. For instance, Thorbecke (2007:5) The second, however, attributes poverty in multi- argues that 'limitation of income as measurement of dimensional terms (Lerer, 2007; UNDP, 2003), involving poverty includes the fact that market in many places is in addition to income, other factors like access to social not perfect. Some services and goods attributing to the services and participation in political affairs (Chamber, well-being cannot be measured by income’. Another 2007). The latter view characterizes poverty as structural problem with these dimensions is the fact that different phenomenon at international, national and community individuals, communities and countries have attained levels, implying as well that the levels are linked (Aikael, different levels of development and consequently are 2010; May and Carter, 1999). confronted with different problems. As a result, their The measurement or definition of poverty itself has not social realities and circumstances influence their priority been without contradictions (Likwalile, 2000, setting. Moreover, the use of concepts like decent life, Msambichaka, 2003). Nonetheless, a number of scholars extreme or absolute, or moderate poverty can be (among them Nissen, 1993) agree that poverty refers to problematic, considering the diversity of settings in which lack of basic needs for survival such as food, shelter and people live. clothes. Nohlen and Nuscheler (1993:32) however The poverty analysis and discussion in this article was understand poverty in development terms. They argue however alive to the range of perspectives and that people tend to refer to poverty in line with 'what they contradictions considered above. The determination of don't have as well as what they would wish to have', poverty goes beyond mere household earning or assets bypassing their situation of 'being'. To Lugalla (1995), into processes and circumstances which enable them to poverty is a material condition but which also expresses earn a certain amount of money or to live a certain type of power relationships. A constellation of these views on life. Thus poverty is understood as a complex, poverty is probably provided by Sen'si Capability and multidimensional process. It is sometimes influenced by Function framework (Thorbecke, 2007:17). factors within or beyond an individual’s capacity to The 2002 Poverty and Human Development Reportii change. Therefore, our analysis links structural (in the describes poverty as a ‘situation in which households are sense of external, if international), national and placed below a socially defined minimum level of well- community levels with individual factors. The analysis being, usually manifest in hunger, sickness, power- also examines the ability of an individual or a community lessness, illiteracy etc.’. In his book ‘The End of Poverty: to fairly participate in, access, afford and use resources How we can make it happen in our life time’, Sachs (human and physical) that are necessary for survival and (2005) distinguishes three degrees of poverty: Extreme development. In particular, we attempted to focus as (or absolute) poverty, moderate poverty and relative closely as we could on the underlying forces of poverty in poverty. Extreme poverty refers to situations in which coastal communities of Tanzania. These, among others, households cannot meet basic needs for survival. This include: inadequate access to capital, low level of type of poverty occurs mainly in developing countries education, training and information related to value of such as Tanzania. According to Sachs, moderate poverty resources and markets, poor or underdeveloped refers to conditions of life in which basic needs are just technology (such as fishing vessels, gears, storage barely met. Relative poverty refers to households with facility), poor marketing and valuing system especially for income below the societal income average. In this case, fish, and lack of cooperatives among artisanal fishermen. relative poverty can exist even if the poor can afford to Within this context, therefore, our poverty analysis in have basic needs. The World Development Report the era of globalization includes not only access and 2000/2001 acknowledges that poverty cannot be management of coastal resources but also market (local understood in economic terms only (Word Bank, 2000), and international), access, affordability and use of that as a social phenomenon, poverty must be charac- modern technology by the local people. The poverty terized in non-economic terms as well (cf. Sigalla, analysis and findings presented in this article focused 2005:5). mainly on household expenditure. Mkenda et al. (2004) Income poverty is measured by using income as a suggest that the principal indicator of welfare, and measure of welfare, while non-income poverty uses other therefore poverty, is the household expenditure. Apart attributes in addition to income to measure poverty. Non- from understanding other dimensions of poverty such as income poverty examines access to, affordability and use education, assets, access to resources and various of social services such as health, water, shelter, clothes, means of livelihoods, it is important to understand sanitation and education which are important to decent household levels of income across regions, districts and living. The income and non-income dimensions of poverty more importantly the variations between areas and explain the disparities that exist worldwide with regard to different occupations. The expenditure is based on recall capability be it within regions, countries or households. of what heads of households remembered having spent Regardless of whether poverty is understood only in over the previous month. Sigalla 171 Table 1. Average per capita Package for the Social Sciences) while STATA (a data analysis and expenditure per month by region. statistical software) was used to analyze poverty indices (i.e. head count index, poverty gap index and poverty severity index) and to Region TZS calculate the Gini Coefficient. South Unguja 4,404 Tanga 6,197 FINDINGS Mtwara 4,092 Spatial dimensions of poverty in the coastal communities in Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar Table 2. Average per capita expenditure per month by district. It is important to take note of the fact that coastal communities are among the poorest in Tanzania,
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