A Socio-Economic Profile of the Rufiji Floodplain and Delta.

Socio-economic profile of Rufiji flood plain and Delta - Vol. 1
3 Results of Questionnaire Survey
3.1 Household characteristics
Table 6 shows the main household characteristics. On average the age of the respondents is 49,
implying that many of the interviewed farmers are in the productive ages of below 60. In general there
are significant differences in age across the finer AEZ of the survey area.
Means of
Inner
Delta
North
(n=43)
Table 6: Household characteristics by AEZ
Inner
Delta
South
(n=15)
Delta
North
(n=25)
Delta
South
(n=30)
North
Flood
Plain
(n=24)
South
Flood
Plain
(n=13)
West
Valley
(n=30)
Total
(n=180)
Age 44(13) 49 (18) 49 (12) 54 (15) 54 (15) 53 (16) 46(16) 49(15) 2.309*
Years of
formal
education
7(2) 6 (1) 6 (1) 6 (2) 6 (3) 6 (3) 7 (1) 6 (2) 0.752
HH size 7 (3) 7(1) 9(4) 8 (3) 6 (3) 8(3) 7 (2) 7(3) 2.083*
No adult
males
2(1) 2(2) 2(2) 2(1) 2(1) 1(1) 1(1) 2(2) 1.344
Number of
adult females
2(0.8) 2(2) 2(2) 2(1) 2(1) 2(1) 2(1) 2(1) 0.871
No working in
HH farm
3(2) 4(2) 4(2) 4(3) 3(2) 4(2) 3(1) 4(2) 1.011
No of adult
male working
in the farm
1(1) 2(2) 2(2) 2(1) 2(1) 1(0) 1(1) 2(1) 1.4
No of adult
female
working in the
farm
1(1) 2(2) 2(1) 1(1) 2(1) 1(1) 1(1) 2(1) 1.1
Source: Survey data
*Means that there are significant differences between AEZ with respect to age and Household size at 5% level.
Numbers in parentheses are standard deviations. The figures are rounded up.
3.1.1 Education
The majority of the respondents have an average of 6 years of formal education/national primary
education. There is no significant difference in number of years of formal education across the AEZ.
(Table 6). Over the sample, the minimum number of years in education is 1 while the maximum is 12.
The results show further that the most frequent number of years in education is 7 (with 56% of the
respondents), followed by 4 years (with18% of the respondents).
Table 7 shows that only 57.7% of the respondents received formal education. The rest have both adult
education and religious studies. This has implications in formulating training programmes for the
people. Discussions with primary school teachers show that many children prefer attending religious
schools than formal primary education. This is mainly because of the strong Islamic culture and
probably due to the ‘high’ cash contributions to formal primary schools. The study was not able to get
data that dis-aggregate between the adult education and the religious studies.
Table 7: Percentage distribution of respondents by attendance to formal education and AEZ.
Inner Delta Inner Delta Delta North Delta South North Flood South West Total
North South (n=26) (n=30) Plain (n=24) Flood Plain Valley (n=182)
(n=44) (n=15)
(n=13) (n=30)
Percent of respondents
Yes 61.4 46.7 57.7 56.7 41.7 69.2 66.7 57.7
No 38.6 53.3 42.3 43.3 58.3 30.8 33.3 42.3
Source: Survey data
F-test
13