IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/agreko/267596.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sources And Implications Of Rural Household Income For Improving Rural Entrepreneurship In Africa: Empirical Evidence From Botswana

Author

Listed:
  • Panin, A.
  • Mahabile, M.
  • Mphoh, I.
  • Batlang, U.

Abstract

In many African countries, a high proportion of the population resides in the rural areas and derives their incomes mainly from agriculture. This notwithstanding, there is a growing evidence that incomes from nonfarm employment sources are increasingly becoming important among the rural population. Using Botswana's rural household survey data, this paper examines the relative contributions and implications of agriculture and nonfarm employment to rural household incomes. Contrary to the popular held view that most rural households derive their income mainly from agriculture, the fmdings of this analysis clearly indicate that nonfarm employment is the dominant source of income in the study area. It accounted for 53% of the average total farm-household income of P4787 (1US$ = P2.49). Remittances alone contributed a substantial share of 37% and constitute an important source of income for most households in the area. On average, 40% of each household's labour force were migrant workers. As regards employment in the area, agriculture employed more than 88% of the active labour force in the villages. The relatively low contribution (47%) from agriculture implies that the potential for savings, investment and development of entrepreneur skills among most people in the area is limited. This situation is likely to encourage rapid rural-urban migration of a considerable proportion of the youth in the area. It is suggested that development strategy of Botswana government should concentrate on sustainable agricultural growth and establishment of rural enterprises to increase both income and employment shares of agriculture and non-agricultural activities, respectively, as well as rural entrepreneurship

Suggested Citation

  • Panin, A. & Mahabile, M. & Mphoh, I. & Batlang, U., 1993. "Sources And Implications Of Rural Household Income For Improving Rural Entrepreneurship In Africa: Empirical Evidence From Botswana," Agrekon, Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa (AEASA), vol. 32(4), September.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:agreko:267596
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.267596
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/267596/files/agrekon-32-04-004.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/267596/files/agrekon-32-04-004.pdf?subformat=pdfa
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.267596?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. M. Rose Olfert, 1992. "Nonfarm, Employment as a Response to Underemployment in Agriculture," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 40(3), pages 443-458, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Panin, A., 1999. "The Economic Impacts Of Education On Smallholder Crop Production Systems In Africa: Empirical Evidence From Botswana," Agrekon, Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa (AEASA), vol. 38(2).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Miller, Matthew Edward, 2003. "An economic perspective on Iowa farm diversification in the twentieth century," ISU General Staff Papers 2003010108000018194, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    2. Findeis, Jill L. & Swaminathan, Hema & Jayaraman, Anuja, 2003. "Agricultural Household-Firm Units: Adjustments to Change," Policy Reform and Adjustment Workshop, October 23-25, 2003, Imperial College London, Wye Campus 15738, International Agricultural Policy Reform and Adjustment Project (IAPRAP).
    3. Dirk Bezemer & Jurgita Rutkauskaite & Romualdas Zemeckis, 2003. "Income Diversity in Rural Lithuania: Benefits, Barriers, and Incentives," Development and Comp Systems 0304004, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Alessandro Corsi & Vito Frontuto & Silvia Novelli, 2021. "What Drives Farm Structural Change? An Analysis of Economic, Demographic and Succession Factors," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-24, May.
    5. E. Phimister & D. Roberts, 2006. "The Effect of Off-farm Work on the Intensity of Agricultural Production," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 34(4), pages 493-515, August.
    6. Phimister, Euan & Roberts, Deborah, 2002. "The Effect of Off-farm Work on Production Intensity and Output Structure," Workshop on the Farm Household-Firm Unit: Its Importance in Agriculture and Implications for Statistics, April 12-13,2002, Wye Campus, Imperial College 15718, International Agricultural Policy Reform and Adjustment Project (IAPRAP).
    7. Abdul-Salam, Yakubu & Roberts, Deborah, 2018. "Determinants of off-farm work and its effect on agricultural input intensity," 92nd Annual Conference, April 16-18, 2018, Warwick University, Coventry, UK 273486, Agricultural Economics Society.
    8. Andersson, Fredrik Ca, 2005. "The Swedish 1990 Agricultural Reform - Adjustments of the Use of Land," 2005 International Congress, August 23-27, 2005, Copenhagen, Denmark 24706, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    9. Robert E. Evenson & Wallace B. Huffman, 1997. "Long-Run Structural and Productivity Change in U.S. Agriculture: Effects of Prices and Policies," Working Papers 773, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:agreko:267596. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeasaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.