Forschungsprojekte - Levison Chiwaula

Food security and poverty alleviation through improved valuation and governance of river fisheries in Africa

Goal: To sustain and improve the livelihoods of the rural poor who depend on fisheries for their employment, income and food security along the rivers of the Lake Chad and Zambezi basins.

Purpose: To strengthen the capacity of national and regional decision-making to develop and implement improved governance and policy mechanisms that sustain river fisheries and enhance their contribution to poverty alleviation and national food security.

Objectives:

Working in the Hadejia-Nguru wetlands in northeastern Nigeria which makes part of the Lake Chad basin, the project will assess the role of small-scale inland fisheries in the poverty reduction and food security. Specifically, the study’s objectives are to:

1. Determine the nature of the linkage between poverty and small-scale fisheries.

2. Assess the impact of small-scale inland fisheries on household food security.

3. Examine the intrahousehold allocation of consumption and productive resources among fishing households in the Hadejia-Nguru wetlands.

4. Assess the role of small-scale fisheries in reducing household vulnerability to negative shocks.

5. Determine the impact of seasonality on the contribution of small-scale fisheries to household livelihood outcomes.

Study Design

The project will collect longitudinal household socio-economic data from households that reside in the Hadejia-Nguru wetlands. After the baseline survey that will capture data on household socio-economic structures, bimonthly data will be collected to capture the changes in the household in terms of incomes, expenditures, assets, and time allocation.