An assessment of the role and utility of stock friends consept as a strategy in poverty alleviation, the case of Ngomeni Community of Mwingi District in Kenya.

Abstract

One of the biggest challenges facing the third world today is high levels of poverty among its population of which Kenya is not an exception. Different ways of poverty alleviation are applied ranging from political, economic, socio-economic and socio-cultural. One such socio-cultural way is the stock friend’s strategy. Although this strategy contributes to poverty alleviation in pastoral and agro-pastoral societies, the strategy is partially effective among the Ngomeni Community of Mwingi District, because of unknown factors. However, it was postulated that the problem may lie in community’s poor awareness of the strategy; community poor understanding of the purposes of stock exchange; community poor understanding of the right types and numbers of livestock for the exchange; low socioeconomic status of the participants; and the rate of adoption of the strategy. The strategy is thus threatened with disappearance, which will be detrimental to the community socially and economically. The study therefore assessed the influence of these postulated problems on commtmity adoption of the stock exchange strategy, and subsequent poverty levels of the community, and suggested some recommendations for promoting the strategy from the findings. This was accomplished through use of a socio- ecological survey of 233 households, sampled from a sampling frame of livestock keepers from four sub-locations, and complemented by key informant’s interviews of resource people in the area. The data was analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) computer software. Descriptive and regression analyses were used to determine the associations and influences of the six factors (independent variables), and one intervening factor, on poverty levels of the community (the dependent variable). The most important factors found to be associated with and influencing poverty Were: the degree of community awareness of stock exchange strategy (B value of -0.433 that explained 23.8% variation); the degree of community understanding of the purpose of stock exchange strategy (B value of -0.345 that explained 17.4% variation) ; community knowledge of type and numbers of stock used in the stock exchange ( [3 value of -0.449 that explained 25.5% variation); and adoption of the stock exchange strategy itself. These are therefore the factors that should be addressed by any interventions directed towards solving the poverty problem of this Community through the use of the stock friend’s concept.