Abstract

Peri-urban development has attracted increased attention in recent years particularly due to conflict/competition between new (urban) and traditional (rural) land uses as a result of peri-urban expansion. Much of the research in peri-urban development is concentrated in peri-urban concepts and definitions, environmental impacts and also impact on agriculture. Little attention is put in the assessment of the peri-urban development on household livelihood and income. This study was therefore conducted with the objective of assessing the impact of the peri-urban development dynamics to household income using the case study of peri-urban Nyahururu, Kenya. The analysis shows a decline in full time farming households from 90% in the 1960s to 49%; an indication of the declining economic significance of agriculture. The decline in significance of agriculture was mainly due to rapidly shrinking household agricultural land as well as low and fluctuating agricultural output prices which reduced the profitability from agricultural production. The decrease in agricultural land was due to the sale of land for residence/business premises and also land bequests to children. In return, households have adopted diverse non-farm activities whose earnings proved to be of varying importance to the annual household income. However most of the households engage in low income productive non-farm activities – nevertheless, the number of households engaged in high income productive non-farm activities was comparatively higher (10% more) compared to the most rural parts of the district. The infrastructural developments coupled with emerging business enterprises were found to be the main factors that enhanced the opportunities for household engagement in high income productive activities. However most of these developments are limited to the financially constrained informal sector and hence can not provide sufficient high income opportunities to lift majority of the population from poverty. Therefore, the possibility for peri-urban development to accomplish a reduction in poverty for the households will not only depend on the infrastructural developments but also on the socio-economic opportunities that arise from the developments – which will be dependent on the developers involved and the government policy. In addition, despite the declining economic significance of agriculture in the study area, we emphasize the importance of government intervention to enhance agricultural productivity and control agricultural land conversion for food security reasons.

Key words: Kenya, peri-urban, household land holding, land use change, agriculture, non-farm income.