Access to Rural Non-Farm Livelihoods - Natural Resources Institute

purchasing power of the local market. Those involved tend to have had some advantage
before they went into their other businesses, such as a salaried job 80 , or connections with
important and/or well informed people, which gave them access to information or NGO
support 81 , or just being born into a family with a tradition of craftsmanship 82 . In contrast to
other areas 83 , a strong farming base was not an important prerequisite for entry into a nonfarm
IGA, and most of those interviewed choose (or would choose) to invest further in their
existing or other non-farm IGAs as opposed to crop farming or livestock activities 84 .
Many of the non-farm IGAs recorded depend on adding value to primary production, or
exploiting natural resources in some way, for example trading in coffee or fish, or carpentry
and basket and mat weaving 85 , or through the consumption of fuelwood, e.g., in baking,
brickmaking, and pottery. However a surprising number do not, relying on raw materials or
products imported to the area (factory manufactured household goods, petrol, cement and
chicken wire, cloth, etc.), or are based on providing services.
4.5 Access and barriers to non-farm IGAs
Barriers to successfully starting and running an IGA were identified at the initial community
meeting. These included:
• lack of start-up capital or credit;
• lack of working capital or credit;
• lack of land or a place to conduct business 86 ;
• problems with customers not repaying credit;
• lack of time to do business; and
• lack of labour.
Other barriers or constraints not listed at the meeting but cited by local people at other times
during the fieldwork included:
• general low levels of consumption which limit local markets for more expensive goods
and services, such as carpentry products or cement water tanks;
• the seasonality and unreliability of agriculture, which affects traders in agricultural
produce most directly, but also every other business which sells to the local market, as
consumption fluctuates 87 ;
80 See Boxes 1, 4, 9 and 10.
81 See Box 6.
82 See Box 7.
83 See sections 5 and the Kumi District Report.
84 See Boxes 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, and 10, but cf. Box 8
85 Although both the timber and the mat fibres are not produced locally.
86 The term “business” was used to separate farm from non-farm income generating activities. Consequently,
the focus of discussions may have caused some people not to put forward ideas which they might not have
thought of relating to “businesses”. In order to broaden the discussion, the term ‘Income Generating Activity’
was also used in an attempt to capture these other non-farm enterprise activities.
87 This particularly affects shopkeepers:
“Business is slow because the rains are late – no one has any money for groceries at the moment.”
Shopkeeper’s daughter, 8/10/2000
“In the bad season people have no money.” Shopkeeper’s wife, 9/10/2000
44