The differentiated impact of Agricultural transformations on livelihood strategies; A case study in the South West Region of Cameroon
Summary
The geography of rural areas in development countries has undergone some major changes in the last decades. Agricultural transformations are often seen as one of the main contributors to those changes. Besides, during those last decades the sustainable livelihood approach has been developed to sketch out the relationships between different aspects of poverty and to analyze people’s livelihood strategies. This thesis considers agricultural transformations and the impact on livelihood strategies in the context of four areas in the South West Region of Cameroon. This rural, and mainly agricultural region is highly influenced by those transformations, which causes many changes on household level of livelihood strategies. In the literature several livelihood strategies can be distinguished. For this study diversification and specialization as important strategies are most relevant. The aim of this research is to explain to which extent changes of livelihoods and livelihood strategies are influenced by agricultural transformations. Besides a comparative analysis is done to see if there are significant differences between the four subregions of this study. In order to explain changes of, and the impact on livelihood strategies, the socio-economic and livelihood characteristics of households are examined. In this research it is argued that agricultural transformations have a differentiated impact on livelihood strategies, dependent on certain aspects. It depends on the characteristics of several agricultural transformations, on the geographical context of a subregion in the South West Region, and particularly on the socio-economic characteristics and the livelihood assets of individual households.